A photograph offers us a glimpse into the abyss of time. John Updike More Quotes by John Updike More Quotes From John Updike The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding. John Updike new-york believe people Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. John Updike faces fame life The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever. John Updike essentials literature self When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but to a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. I think of the books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a countryish teen-aged boy finding them, and having them speak to him. The review, the stacks in Brentano's, are just hurdles to get over, to place the books on that shelf. John Updike new-york writing book Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life. John Updike literature jobs religion Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey. John Updike pain writing honey We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable. John Updike sociable sane The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion. John Updike space stories religion Chaos is God's body. Order is the Devil's chains. John Updike devil body order To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man. John Updike dream men reality The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun's just started. John Updike dumb fun people 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 people I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves. John Updike life-is-too-short reading writing Man makes one journey all his living days, Down through the realms of music and of art; Down through the halls of fame and glorious praise; Down through the tears and triumphs of the heart To some sweet woman waiting some place there. For her he builds his cities and makes war, Seeks gold and glorious wealth to store. John Updike sweet war art People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren't people any more, they're just ssoul-less sheep. John Updike mourning sheep people If you're telling me I'm not mature, that's one thing I don't cry over since as far as I can make out it's the same thing as being dead. John Updike cry maturity mature A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience. John Updike patience inspirational years When you look into a mirror it is not yourself you see, but a kind of apish error posed in fearful symmetry kool uoy nehW rorrim a otni ton si ti ˛ees uoy flesruoy dnik a tub rorre hsipa fo lufraef ni desop yrtemmys John Updike perspective errors mirrors It's great to have an enemy. Sharpens your senses. John Updike senses enemy 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 education father children
