John Updike Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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To write a good mystery you have to know where it will end before you can decide where it will begin... and I've always known where it will end.
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Gandhi's ideas were rooted in a wide experience of a freshly globalized world.
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I surround myself with positive, productive people of good will and decency.
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The man for me is the cherry on the pie. But I'm the pie and my pie is good all by itself. Even if I don't have a cherry.
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By the time you know what to do, you're too old to do it.
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There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough.
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I think same sex couples should be able to get married.
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Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
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If you don't have liberty and self-determination, you've got nothing, that's what this is what this country is built on. And this is the ultimate self-determination, when you determine how and when you're going to die when you're suffering.
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I thought that communism, the tyranny of communism, was an abomination and I beseeched God to bring that terrible evil down and he did. It was a great triumph, it took awhile, but it happened.
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Leonard Cohen has a way with words and with humor that remind me to lighten up, which I appreciate very much.
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For me, religious festivals and celebrations have become an important way to teach my children about how we can transform living with diversity from the superficial 'I eat ethnic food', to something dignified, mutually respectful and worthwhile.
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My stepfather had a connection with The Second City and told me I should go there. I woke up in a cold sweat one night and said, 'I'm moving to Chicago.' That's how I went to Second City.
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What's the most important thing in the world? It's love, and I look at that as an energy, not a sentiment.
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You can cite me for contempt, Your Honor. I don't care.
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Enjoy every sandwich.
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My great inspiration has always been Studs Terkel, who is a wonderful American oral historian. He was a radio DJ at first, interviewed a lot of jazz musicians, and at some point started to interview Americans about work.
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I like my feet. I have a tattoo on my foot with my last name. They're dancer feet. They're pretty. My toes are proportioned nicely. And they're strong - I can pinch people with my toes.
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Writers find common ground not through the homelands they once inhabited but the thematic questions with which they grapple.
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Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. The mounting of this illusion defines the purpose and accounts for the immense wealth of American sports. It is the ceremony of innocence that the fans pay to see - not the game or the match or the bout, but the ritual portrayal of a world in which time stops and all hope remains plausible, in which everybody present can recover the blameless expectations of a child, where the forces of light always triumph over the powers of darkness.
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When I meet someone who I really admire, I enjoy nothing more than trying to connect with them and asking them about their career. I want to know who the people are behind the performances and how they relate to their performances. But it's maybe not as novel as it once was.
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I'm going to give people the benefit of the doubt.
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I get invited to do panels with other Brooklyn writers to discuss what it's like to be a writer in Brooklyn. I expect it's like writing in Manhattan, but there aren't as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee. It's like writing in Paris, but there are fewer people speaking French.
Colson Whitehead -
He didn't have a worry in the world back then. He was in paradise and didn't know it.