John Updike Quotes

Most popular John Updike Quotes

All blessings are mixed blessings. - John Updike quote.
All blessings are mixed blessings.
— John Updike

luck fate

We are most alive when we're in love. - John Updike quote.
We are most alive when we're in love.
— John Updike
Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart. - John Updike quote.
Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.
— John Updike

critics

Sex is like money; only too much is enough. - John Updike quote.
Sex is like money; only too much is enough.
— John Updike Couples

sex

Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. - John Updike quote.
Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.
— John Updike Self-Consciousness

celebrity

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy. - John Updike quote.
America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.
— John Updike in The New Yorker

happiness America

I think of my books as canvases. I paint with words. - John Updike quote.
I think of my books as canvases. I paint with words.
— John Updike Words Still Count With Me: A Chronicle of Literary Conversations

writing

Art imitates Nature in this: not to dare is to dwindle. - John Updike quote.
Art imitates Nature in this: not to dare is to dwindle.
— John Updike

art risk-taking

Your fear trills like an alarm bell you cannot shut off. - John Updike quote.
Your fear trills like an alarm bell you cannot shut off.
— John Updike Rabbit, Run

fear

What art offers is space—a certain breathing room for the spirit. - John Updike quote.
What art offers is space—a certain breathing room for the spirit.
— John Updike

art

Adversity in immunological doses has its uses; more than that crushes. - John Updike quote.
Adversity in immunological doses has its uses; more than that crushes.
— John Updike Hugging the Shore

adversity

Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life. - John Updike quote.
Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life.
— John Updike

religion

Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn. - John Updike quote.
Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn.
— John Updike in The New Yorker

art

New York is of course many cities, and an exile does not return to the one he left. - John Updike quote.
New York is of course many cities, and an exile does not return to the one he left.
— John Updike Odd Jobs

New York City exile

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them. - John Updike quote.
Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
— John Updike Self-Consciousness: Memoirs

dreams

You reach an age when every sentence you write bumps into one you wrote thirty years ago. - John Updike quote.
You reach an age when every sentence you write bumps into one you wrote thirty years ago.
— John Updike in The New York Times

writing

The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop. - John Updike quote.
The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.
— John Updike Couples: A Novel

infidelity

The inner spaces that a good short story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion. - John Updike quote.
The inner spaces that a good short story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion.
— John Updike The Year’s Best American Short Stories, 1985

stories

Writing doesn't require drive.  It's like saying a chicken has to have drive to lay an egg. - John Updike quote.
Writing doesn't require drive.  It's like saying a chicken has to have drive to lay an egg.
— John Updike The

writing

Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self-solicitude is the enemy of well-being. - John Updike quote.
Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self-solicitude is the enemy of well-being.
— John Updike Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism

perfection

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. - John Updike quote.
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.
— John Updike Hugging the Shore

criticism

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one-and-a-half times his own weight in other people's patience. - John Updike quote.
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one-and-a-half times his own weight in other people's patience.
— John Updike

funny boring people

An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world.  No act is so private it does not seek applause. - John Updike quote.
An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world.  No act is so private it does not seek applause.
— John Updike Couples: A Novel
Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by vague memories of having read the reviews. - John Updike quote.
Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by vague memories of having read the reviews.
— John Updike The Coup: A Novel

life

To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client. - John Updike quote.
To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client.
— John Updike Buchanan Dying

president

One imagines, when young, that everything desirable must be obtained in spite of the adult world, against its grain. - John Updike quote.
One imagines, when young, that everything desirable must be obtained in spite of the adult world, against its grain.
— John Updike Self-Consciousness: Memoirs

youth & age

Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that mankind has invented yet. - John Updike quote.
Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that mankind has invented yet.
— John Updike Odd Jobs

fiction

Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad; hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us. - John Updike quote.
Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad; hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us.
— John Updike

nature

It's not enough for a story to flow.  It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts. - John Updike quote.
It's not enough for a story to flow.  It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts.
— John Updike Talk

stories

It's a little like going to the tailor or barber.  I have never liked haircuts and I don't like being edited, even slightly. - John Updike quote.
It's a little like going to the tailor or barber.  I have never liked haircuts and I don't like being edited, even slightly.
— John Updike

editors

There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam. - John Updike quote.
There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam.
— John Updike Self-Consciousness: Memoirs

writing words

Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself. - John Updike quote.
Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself.
— John Updike

education

Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. . . any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better. - John Updike quote.
Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. . . any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.
— John Updike
Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five. - John Updike quote.
Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.
— John Updike

golf

Pressed, I would define spirituality as the shadow of light humanity casts as it moves through the darkness of everything that can be explained. - John Updike quote.
Pressed, I would define spirituality as the shadow of light humanity casts as it moves through the darkness of everything that can be explained.
— John Updike Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism

spiritual

In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays ... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola; they promoted thirst without quenching it. - John Updike quote.
In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays ... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola; they promoted thirst without quenching it.
— John Updike

church

The Founding Fathers...in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents.  So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. - John Updike quote.
The Founding Fathers...in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents.  So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education.
— John Updike The Centaur

education

Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture, whether of cover cloth, glazed jacket, or flexible paperback. - John Updike quote.
Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture, whether of cover cloth, glazed jacket, or flexible paperback.
— John Updike in The New York Times

books

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 quote.
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

artists

It was one of history's great love stories, the mutually profitable romance which Hollywood and bohunk America conducted almost in the dark, a tapping of fervent messages through the wall of the San Gabriel Range. - John Updike quote.
It was one of history's great love stories, the mutually profitable romance which Hollywood and bohunk America conducted almost in the dark, a tapping of fervent messages through the wall of the San Gabriel Range.
— John Updike

critics

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 quote.
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 Couples: A Novel

deceit

As in marriage, there is sharing [in golf]; we search for one another's lost balls, we comment helpfully upon one another's defective swings, we march more or less in the same direction, and we come together, like couples at breakfast and dinner, on the tees and on the greens. - John Updike quote.
As in marriage, there is sharing [in golf]; we search for one another's lost balls, we comment helpfully upon one another's defective swings, we march more or less in the same direction, and we come together, like couples at breakfast and dinner, on the tees and on the greens.
— John Updike Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf

golf

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.
— John Updike Assorted Prose

boring people