Figure out where you're going before you go there: he was told that a long time ago. John Updike More Quotes by John Updike More Quotes From John Updike Literature gives us models of living human beings who may not agree with us and even be our enemies. D. H. Lawrence said that the purpose of literature was to expand our sympathies. 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. And this conflict cannot be easily reconciled. The tension is always there as a kind of a pain in the human condition. John Updike paindreamreality The throat: how strange, that there is not more erotic emphasis upon it. For here, through this compound pulsing pillar, our life makes its leap into spirit, and in the other direction gulps down what it needs of the material world. John Updike pillarseroticworld Green grass, green grandstands, green concession stalls, green paper cups, green folding chairs and visors for sale, green and white ropes, green-topped Georgia pines. If justice were poetic, Hubert Green would win it every year. John Updike whitewinningyears You cannot help but learn more as take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is and old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it. John Updike graduationinspirationalhands We are living in a world in which we don't give the young enough reason to live. The temper and the lyrics of a lot of punk music and so on is very, life sucks and then you die, sort of theory. I feel life is cheaper and death is more attractive now than it was when I was an adolescent, as I remember. Suicide was a personal pathology when it was committed. There was no society approval of it, like there certainly is in Palestine and some quarters of Iraq. John Updike life-suckssuicidegiving 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 lightdarknessmoving Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works. John Updike 20th-centurycenturysaid But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography. John Updike phrasesbiographiestwo Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews. John Updike dramamemorieslife We were all brought up to want things and maybe the world isn't big enough for all that wanting. I don't know. I don't know anything John Updike enoughwantworld Faith is not so much a binary pole as a quantum state, which tends to indeterminacy when closely examined. John Updike binaryquantumstates Baseball is meant to be fun, and not all the solemn money-men in fur-collared greatcoats, not all the scruffy media cameramen and sour-faced reporters that crowd around the dugouts can quite smother the exhilarating spaciousness and grace of this impudently relaxed sport, a game of innumerable potential redemptions and curious disappointments. John Updike baseballfunsports An American in London...cannot but be impressed and charmed by the city. The momumentality of Washington, the thriving business of New York, the antique intimacy of Boston, plus a certain spacious and open feeling reminiscent of Denver and San Francisco-all these he finds combined for his pleasure. John Updike bostoncitiesnew-york We are cruel enough without meaning to be. John Updike enough The physicists are getting down to the nitty-gritty, they've really just about pared things down to the ultimate details, and the last thing they ever expected to happen is happening. God is showing through. John Updike physicistdetailslasts Life, too much of it, and not enough. The fear that it will end some day, and the fear that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday. John Updike too-muchyesterdaylife I'm not against TV; I don't go on the morning talk shows because I'm not invited. If I was, I might go. John Updike goes-onmorningmight All dancing is now is standing in place and letting the devil of the music enter you. John Updike devildancingdance The illusion is an agreement between the reader and writer that this [story] will be like life. The emotional temperature drops when you have footnotes. John Updike emotionalagreementstories I write about, more or less, everything I can think of, that is I stretch my imagination as far as it'll go. I am kind of stuck in the middle as far as my life goes, and hence my imagination tends to zero in on things which are indeed in the middle. That is, I don't write about the very rich, who I scarcely know, or the very poor who I don't know very well either. John Updike zerowritingthinking
