Quotes by John Updike

About John Updike:

John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic.
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It's so hard to make a good tee shot after a birdie.

John Updike

It's sort of good to see your vocation as a daily task and have fairly modest expectations for financial or reward in other coin - glory, love, whatever.

John Updike

I don't know; I think I'd be gloomy without some faith that there is a purpose and there is a kind of witness to my life.

John Updike

Does fiction, artistic writing, have much of a future? I must say it's on the way out.

John Updike

Mars has long exerted a pull on the human imagination. The erratically moving red star in the sky was seen as sinister or violent by the ancients: The Greeks identified it with Ares, the god of war; the Babylonians named it after Nergal, god of the u...

John Updike

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
Life quotes by John Updike, Nature quotes by John Updike, UberQuotes

Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

John Updike

My life is, in a sense, trash. My life is only that of which the residue is my writing.

John Updike

Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life.

John Updike

My attempt has been really to, beyond making a record of contemporary life, which is what you inevitably do, is trying to make beautiful books - books that are in some way beautiful, that are models of how to use the language, models of honest feelin...

John Updike

We don't really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting a certain set of intelligible skills.

John Updike

We are most alive when we're in love.

John Updike

Belief, like love, must be voluntary.

John Updike

I love Shillington not as one loves Capri or New York, because they are special, but as one loves one's own body and consciousness, because they are synonymous with being.

John Updike

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.

John Updike

We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.

John Updike

From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.

John Updike

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.

John Updike

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

John Updike

A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.

John Updike

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

John Updike

Author Bio

  • NameJohn Updike
  • DescriptionAmerican novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic
  • AliasesJohn Hoyer Updike
  • BornMarch 18, 1932
  • DiedJanuary 27, 2009
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Writer; Novelist; Essayist
  • WorksThe Witches Of Eastwick
  • AwardsCommandeur Des Arts Et Des Lettres?; National Medal Of Arts; National Humanities Medal; National Book Award