John Updike Quotes
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Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.
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To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client; still, one must make the best of the case, for the purposes of Providence.
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Charlie asks her for a Perrier with lime. She says that San Pellegrino is what they have. He says it's all the same to him. Fancy water is fancy water.
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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.
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That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds.
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He had a sensation of anxiety and shame, a sensitivity acute beyond usefulness, as if the nervous system, flayed of its old hide of social usage, must record every touch of pain.
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...the Japanese interest him professionally. How do they and the Germans do it, when America's going down the tubes?
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Figure out where you're going before you go there: he was told that a long time ago.
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Yes, there is a ton of information on the web, but much of it is egregiously inaccurate, unedited, unattributed and juvenile.
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Charlie interrupts impatiently, 'Pain is where it's at for punks. Mutilation, self-hatred, slam dancing. For these kids today, ugly is beautiful. That's their way of saying what a lousy world we're giving them. No more rain forests. Toxic waste. You know the drill.'
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When you're retired, you get into your routines and other people, even so-called loved ones, become a strain.
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If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.
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From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.
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...they were nobodies in the county, they would leave nothing behind but their headstones.
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For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do - they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.
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Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.
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If society is the prison, families are the cells, with no time off for good behavior. Good behavior in fact tends to lengthen the sentence.
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America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.
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Thelma '...We're too old to keep being foolish.'
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His voice is hurrying, to keep up with his brain.
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Late in the game as it is, you keep trying.
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Harry having drawn at golf The shape of his collapse clings to him. Who says the universe isn't soaked in disgrace?
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Harry, to Nelson 'Don't forget, there's a Depression coming.'
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Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being 'somebody,' to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. One can either see or be seen.