John Updike Quotes

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

John Updike

• Writing
• Poetry
• Sea
• Criticism
• Sailing

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Quotes to Explore

• So people think I'm lying about my age all the time? It's the records that are wrong. I've never told anyone how old I am. The minute they ask me, I say 'That's none of your business.' So that means I've never once lied about my age. Now that's true!

  

  Calista Flockhart
  • People
  • Time
  • Business

• The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.

  

  Victor Borge
  • Difference
  • VIolin
  • Viola

• In truth, opinion may be taken for understanding; understanding cannot be taken for opinion. How so? Surely because opinion may be deceived; understanding cannot be. If it could, it would not be understanding but opinion. For true understanding has not only certain truth, but the knowledge of truth.

  

  Saint Bernard
  • May
  • Truth
  • True

• The environmental movement, like all political processes, reacts best to disasters. But these are very slow, very gradual disasters in the making.

  

  Ted Danson
  • Political
  • Best
  • Environmental

• There are no opportune times for a penalty, and this is not one of those times.

  

  Jack Youngblood
  • Times
  • Penalty
  • Those

• I know people think that a lot of sports stars are a little bit up themselves, but they all have their heroes, too.

  

  Gary Lineker
  • People
  • Up
  • Sports

• I love people who break boundaries and always create something new and fresh.

  

  Randy Jackson Breakfast Club
  • People
  • Create
  • Break

• It's a great feat for me to have broken my world record.

  

  Usain Bolt
  • World
  • Great
  • Broken

• I loathe bad theater and most theatre is very bad because it's repetitious, unexciting and, dangerously, it is sometimes praised for those things.

  

  Fiona Shaw
  • Bad
  • Sometimes
  • Theatre

• The very idea of marriage is basic to recognition as equals in our society; any status short of that is inferior, unjust, and unconstitutional.

  

  Ted Olson
  • Society
  • Marriage
  • Short

• Anti-religious sneers are a hallmark of perpetual adolescents.

  

  Camille Paglia
  • Religious
  • Religion
  • Hallmark

• Acting is something that I always wanted, but I never paid attention to the notion that it might actually work out. You have all sorts of ideas about what you want to do - at one stage, I wanted to be a jockey - but this is the one that's a big deal.

  

  Olivia Thirlby
  • Work
  • Attention
  • Ideas

• The University of South Carolina has always played a role in my life and the intellectual life of South Carolina.

  

  Pat Conroy
  • Life
  • My Life
  • Intellectual

• 'Wicked' gave us a story that 'The Wizard of Oz' did not. Two sides to every story.

  

  Abbi Glines
  • Story
  • Two
  • Sides

• Personal responsibility is not only recognizing the errors of our ways. Personal responsibility lies in our willingness and ability to correct those errors individually and collectively.

  

  Yehuda Berg
  • Responsibility
  • Lies
  • Ability

• I am the luckiest novelist in the world. I was a first-time novelist who wasn't awash in rejection slips, whose manuscript didn't disappear in slush piles. I have had a wonderful time.

  

  Vikas Swarup
  • Time
  • Wonderful
  • Rejection

• Whenever I write a new song, it always happens when I come back from Europe or Egypt or something like that. It's always from travelling.

  

  Yuna
  • Song
  • Always
  • Egypt

• If I had been straight, I would have been an entirely different person. I would never have turned toward writing with a burning desire to confess, to understand, to justify myself in the eyes of others... I wouldn't have been impelled to live in New York and choose the hard poverty of bohemia over the soft comfort of the business world.

  

  Edmund White
  • World
  • Different
  • Writing

• I don't run outside, honestly. Sometimes I go out around my house, but mainly it's the stupid treadmill. I wish I had a better answer, but I'm very businesslike about my runs.

  

  Drew Carey
  • House
  • Wish
  • Stupid

• Most of us carry at least a weak sense of a correlation between poetry and human possibility that cannot be realized by poems. The poet, by his very claim to be a maker of poems, is therefore both an embarrassment and accusation.

  

  Ben Lerner
  • Poetry
  • Embarrassment
  • Correlation

• Cisco projects that in 2020, now just five years away, there will be seven billion people on the earth and 50 billion devices connected to the Internet. Six-and-a-half devices on average per person. As a father of five young adults and teenagers, I think we are - in my household, we've exceeded the 6.5 number.

  

  James Comey
  • People
  • Father
  • Earth

• Every single character in the world, every creature in the world has something to give and something to learn.

  

  Shailene Woodley
  • World
  • Character
  • Creature

• The vastest earthly Day Is shrunken small By one Defaulting Face Behind a Pall.

  

  Emily Dickinson
  • Day
  • Face

• Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

  

  John Updike
  • Writing
  • Poetry
  • Sea