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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.
John Updike -
Harry, to Nelson 'Don't forget, there's a Depression coming.'
John Updike
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'Things change,' says Mr Shimada. 'Is world's sad secret.'
John Updike -
To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.
John Updike -
The smell of good advice always makes Rabbit want to run the other way.
John Updike -
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.
John Updike -
It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks latenesses, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patchings to repair great rents in the quotidian.
John Updike -
Late in the game as it is, you keep trying.
John Updike
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Cars used to have such dashing shapes, like airplanes, back when gas was cheap, twenty-five cents a gallon.
John Updike -
By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.
John Updike -
We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.
John Updike -
He didn't have a worry in the world back then. He was in paradise and didn't know it.
John Updike -
Mim, to Nelson, about Annabelle 'She's letting herself go. You can't afford in life to do that if you're gonna contend.'
John Updike -
'...This is a hideous thing. None of us will ever be the same.'
John Updike
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Life is a hill that gets steeper the more you climb.
John Updike -
In show business you learn to let it slide off your back. You know, fuck 'em. Otherwise you'd kill yourself.
John Updike -
Zeus had loved his old friend, and lifted him up, and set him among the stars as the constellation Sagittarius. Here, in the Zodiac, now above, now below the horizon, he assists in the regulation of our destinies, though in this latter time few living mortals cast their eyes respectfully toward Heaven, and fewer still sit as students to the stars.
John Updike -
Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.
John Updike -
He had gone to church and brought back this little flame and had nowhere to put it on the dark damp walls of the apartment, so it had flickered and gone out. And he realised that he wouldn't always be able to produce this flame.
John Updike -
Nelson '...People are crazy. At times when I'm with clients I can't see the difference between them and me, except for the structure we're all in. I get paid, a little, and they get taken care of, a little.'
John Updike
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A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.
John Updike -
Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life.
John Updike -
Mr Shimada 'Toyota does not enjoy bad games prayed with its ploduct.'
John Updike -
'Did Nelson ever tell you the story,' Pru asks Annabelle, 'how he lost the agency up his nose?'
John Updike