John Updike Quotes

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

Life, Rain, Earth

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

Art, Spirit, Space

We are most alive when we're in love.
John Updike

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

Creativity, Creative, Name

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

Leadership, Men, Leader

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

Ungrateful, Act, President

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.
John Updike

Poetry, Writing, Sea

Truth should not be forced; it should simply manifest itself, like a woman who has in her privacy reflected and coolly decided to bestow herself upon a certain man.
John Updike

Truth, Woman, Her

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

After, Moment, Last

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

Patience, Year, Times

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.
John Updike

Change, Art, Last

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

Sports, Past, Idiot

An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause.
John Updike

Act, Wants, Share

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.
John Updike

Time, Dissolved, Dissolves

The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it.
John Updike

Society, Mad, Tell

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
John Updike

Dreams, Nature, True

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

Door, While, Within

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.
John Updike

Money, Men, Children

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

Life, Religion, Ignore

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

Mind, Write, Aim

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.
John Updike

Happy, America, Conspiracy

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.
John Updike

Respect, Whatever, Costs

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

Creative, Cares, Activity

Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn.
John Updike

Art, Baby, Shoes

Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.
John Updike

Naked, Barefoot, Approaches

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Biography

Nationality: American

Born: March 18, 1932

Died: January 27, 2009

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Cite this Page: Citation

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