John Updike Quotes

The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

John Updike

• Rest
• Risk

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Quotes to Explore

• Editorial photography has to be energetic and visually competitive.

  

  Sam Abell
  • Photography
  • Competitive

• I have to protect myself because people think that because you come into 25 million homes every week, they know you. I walk the line between being gracious and being rude.

  

  Gary Dourdan
  • People
  • Myself
  • Week

• Kids are taking music for free all the time. They have Spotify, Pandora... The record companies aren't making the kind of music that they used to make. Artists make their money on tours, not from album sales.

  

  Malcolm D. Lee
  • Time
  • Music
  • Money

• I stay true because whatever the project is, I'm still looking for inside of that character. It's the thing that connects him to me and to everybody else. So, the search is the same. It's to unveil the truth, and that's how I stay true, because my purpose isn't altered.

  

  Forest Whitaker
  • Character
  • Truth
  • True

• Russia is an amazing country to be an entrepreneur.

  

  Maelle Gavet
  • Country
  • Amazing
  • Entrepreneur

• Sometimes you surf well and still don't win. It happens to everyone. You learn that one big score doesn't mean much if you don't have a backup. I guess every rookie learns that as time goes by. I took some big lessons from my losses.

  

  Gabriel Medina
  • Time
  • Learn
  • Win

• I made a very conscious decision to quit acting. I was on a series, and we were in the process of renegotiating. They had an idea of what they thought I was worth, and I had an idea that was quite different.

  

  Taylor Sheridan
  • Different
  • Decision
  • Thought

• I can't deal with someone flashy. That's so not me.

  

  Kate Bosworth
  • Me
  • Deal
  • Someone

• Whatever requires an undue amount of thought or trouble or involves a large expenditure of effort and causes our whole life to revolve, as it were, around solicitude for the flesh must be avoided by Christians.

  

  Saint Basil
  • Life
  • Effort
  • Thought

• Europe is especially vulnerable to terrorists who may hide among the refugees pouring across its borders.

  

  Naftali Bennett
  • May
  • Europe
  • Refugees

• I don't feel that no big stone should be put over my head, saying he did this, he did that. Unless there's something that I really did do. I believe I'm just ordinary. And I'd like for people to think of me that way, as just a guy that tried. Wanted to be loved by other people because he loved people.

  

  B. B. King
  • People
  • Believe
  • Way

• Kudos to you for generating enough sweat that it actually drips off of your body - and all over the machine you are using at the time. If you sweat a lot, that's fine, but wipe down the damn machine when you're done... or I will confront you, and it will not be pretty.

  

  Rachel Nichols
  • Time
  • Done
  • Pretty

• I don't subscribe to the idea that if you don't have the body you want, you can't be proud of the body you have. I think you can do both.

  

  Zach Anner
  • Want
  • Proud
  • Body

• Latin food suffers like Chinese. You can do marginal Chinese and be successful. You can do crappy Mexican and be packed.

  

  Aaron Sanchez
  • Food
  • Successful
  • Chinese

• The more I come to know about the outside world's perception of China, the more I feel there are all sorts of misunderstandings, and to a certain extent, people do not get the full picture from the media. A lot of foreigners have few opportunities to visit China, and a lot of Chinese people do not have the chance to go to Europe or to the West.

  

  Jack Ma
  • People
  • World
  • Picture

• I am blessed to receive a word from God every day in receiving the scriptures and reading the scriptures. And God speaks through the Bible.

  

  Ted Cruz
  • God
  • Reading
  • Day

• When I retired from my music November 1997, it had been 37 years.

  

  Barbara Mandrell
  • Music
  • Years
  • Been

• Write with abandon and no constraints for first draft. Cut brutally and save in separate files on second draft. Add conflict; don't be afraid to make your characters suffer. Read what you love. Write what you love. Love.

  

  Francesca Lia Block
  • Love
  • Conflict
  • Add

• Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

  

  Bernard Malamud
  • Writing

• Viv had this kind of stage presence where you couldn't ignore it. He walked onstage, he looked dangerous. You just didn't know what he was going to do.

  

  Neil Innes
  • Ignore

• I'd love to win Wimbledon.

  

  Jamie Murray

• Why do some die and some live? The answer was clearly, that on the whole the best fitted live. From the effects of disease the most healthy escaped; from enemies, the strongest, swiftest, or the most cunning; from famine, the best hunters or those with the best digestion; and so on. Then it suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain-that is, the fittest would survive.

  

  Alfred Russel Wallace
  • Live
  • Why
  • Die

• Many women cut back what had to be done at home by redefining what the house, the marriage and, sometimes, what the child needs. One woman described a fairly common pattern: I do my half. I do half of his half, and the rest doesn't get done.

  

  Arlie Russell Hochschild
  • Women
  • Done
  • Home

• The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

  

  John Updike
  • Rest
  • Risk