John Updike Quotes

What more fiendish proof of cosmic irresponsibility than a Nature which, having invented sex as a way to mix genes, then permits to arise, amid all its perfumed and hypnotic inducements to mate, a tireless tribe of spirochetes and viruses that torture and kill us for following orders?

John Updike

• Nature
• Sex

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I found out that there was this project called the 'Great Green Wall' where they wanted to plant trees across the Sahara desert, and the idea was born that I wanted to create a support structure for that initiative.

  

  Magnus Larsson
  • Great
  • Support
  • Wall

• Whenever I dream about flying, it's the best feeling in the world.

  

  Kate Mara
  • World
  • Dream
  • Feeling

• But you have to understand that I consider myself a very modest artist, or whatever, and not of importance really at all - it is quite embarrassing to me to be asked my opinion about things. I am only a wee Scottish poet on the outside of everything.

  

  Ian Hamilton Finlay
  • Artist
  • Poet
  • Embarrassing

• I think that when we strip people down, most of us want the same things. People just have very different views of how to get there.

  

  Dan Gilbert
  • People
  • Different
  • Think

• Unless a Western's made money - doesn't matter who made the money, doesn't matter what the subject is - if the last one didn't make any money, you can't make another one for a four-year period. Westerns more than any genre.

  

  Val Kilmer
  • Money
  • You
  • Period

• I had a wonderful mother who wanted my sister and me to have everything, even though money was a very prominent thing we didn't have. But we had a very happy childhood - pretty much ideal, in fact.

  

  Natalie Babbitt
  • Money
  • Happy
  • Mother

• Many women do not want to venture out into the 'opinion world' until they are certain of themselves, the facts, and that they are right. They are afraid of being shot down. The result is often silence.

  

  Madeleine M. Kunin
  • World
  • Women
  • Opinion

• I never know what is going to have that 'X' factor and what isn't.

  

  Cameron Mackintosh
  • Know
  • Never
  • Going

• Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Great
  • Mother
  • Effort

• I listen to a mixture of old jazz, contemporary, pop, some world beat stuff and various odds and ends.

  

  Walter Becker Steely Dan
  • World
  • Old
  • Jazz

• I found a certain kind of music congenial to me; it never occurred to me to write music that was academically acceptable.

  

  Carlisle Floyd
  • Music
  • Me
  • Kind

• I'm not worried at all about going to 160 lb.

  

  Canelo Alvarez
  • Going
  • Worried
  • About

• For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown.

  

  A. R. Ammons
  • Small
  • Need
  • Unknown

• For me, temptation is life and I have a gargantuan appetite for everything.

  

  Felix Dennis
  • Life
  • Me
  • Temptation

• Teachability and trust always leads to total obedience.

  

  Ed Townsend
  • Trust
  • Always
  • Obedience

• What is right, what is wrong, how can anyone say? I view very, very, few things as Right with a capital R.

  

  Dan Farmer
  • Say
  • Wrong
  • View

• I sometimes just don't like to see the Ultimate Fighting. I just find it, as a martial artist, I just find it too violent.

  

  Jackie Chan
  • Fighting
  • Sometimes
  • Artist

• I have this concept that I call 'Combo Meals.' The idea is that I start with the kids' meal and then add a few more ingredients, and it becomes the adult meal. This way I'm not making two entirely separate dishes. I'm just simply adding on to what I'm already making.

  

  Tamra Davis
  • Kids
  • Way
  • Start

• To a great experience one thing is essential - an experiencing nature.

  

  Walter Bagehot
  • Great
  • Experience
  • Nature

• Human nature doesn't change. When enough people are comfortable enough financially, there is going to be human nature that wants to spend more money on better quality and, to some degree, status symbols as well.

  

  Danny Meyer
  • People
  • Money
  • Nature

• To get Xi Jinping to help with our Pyongyang problem, Trump has dropped all talk of befriending Taiwan, backed off Tillerson's warning to Beijing to vacate its fortified reefs in the South China Sea, and held out promises of major concessions to Beijing in future trade deals.

  

  Pat Buchanan
  • Help
  • Future
  • Sea

• Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

  

  Cyril Connolly

• But - drive out prejudice with a pitch-fork it will ever return.

  

  H. P. Blavatsky

• What more fiendish proof of cosmic irresponsibility than a Nature which, having invented sex as a way to mix genes, then permits to arise, amid all its perfumed and hypnotic inducements to mate, a tireless tribe of spirochetes and viruses that torture and kill us for following orders?

  

  John Updike
  • Nature
  • Sex