How sad, how strange, we make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation. John Updike More Quotes by John Updike More Quotes From John Updike What you lose as you age is witnesses, the ones that watched from early on and cared, like your own little grandstand. John Updike like-youagelittles 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 wallwritingdoors 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 ice-creammenchildren For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do - they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities. John Updike glowingmalessex I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto. John Updike young-writersdown-andwant Our lives fade behind us before we die. John Updike fadesbehindslife Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency. John Updike wisdomtimeideas Think binary. When matter meets antimatter, both vanish, into pure energy. But both existed; I mean, there was a condition we'll call "existence." Think of one and minus one. Together they add up to zero, nothing, nada, niente, right? Picture them together, then picture them separating-peeling apart. ... Now you have something, you have two somethings, where once you had nothing. John Updike zerosciencemean Women are an alien race set down among us. John Updike womenaliensrace The difficulty is, all swing thoughts decay, like radium. What burnt up the course on Wednesday has turned to lead on Sunday. Yet it does not do to have a blank mind: the terrible hugeness of the course will rush into the vacuum and the ball will spray like a thing berserk. John Updike swingssundaygolf To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given. John Updike warfunnysex There was clearly great charm and worth in a sport so quaintly perverse in its basic instructions. Hit down to make the ball rise. Swing easy to make it go far. Finish high to make it go straight. John Updike swingsgolfsports ...as all souls are equal before their Maker, a two inch putt counts the same as a 250 yard drive. There is a comedy in this and a certain unfairness even, which makes golf an even apter mirror of reality. John Updike mirrorsgolfreality Bankruptcy is a sacred state, a condition beyond conditions, as theologians might say, and attempts to investigate it are necessarily obscene, like spiritualism. One knows only that he has passed into it and lives beyond us, in a condition not ours. John Updike debtsacredmight The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds are flown. John Updike autumngrievingfall It skims in through the eye, and by means of the utterly delicate retina hurls shadows like insect legs inward for translation. Then an immense space opens up in silence and an endlessly fecund sub-universe the writer descends, and asks the reader to descend after him, not merely to gain instructions but also to experience delight, the delight of mind freed from matter and exultant in the strength it has stolen from matter. John Updike spaceeyemean And there was, in those Ipswich years, for me at least, a raw educational component; though I used to score well in academic tests, I seemed to know very little of how the world worked and was truly grateful for instruction, whether it was how to stroke a backhand, mix a martini, use a wallpaper steamer, or do the Twist. My wife, too, seemed willing to learn. Old as we must have looked to our children, we were still taking lessons, in how to be grown-up. John Updike educationalhappinesschildren The great thing about the dead, they make space. John Updike great-thingsspacedeath Time is our element, not a mistaken invader. John Updike invaderselementstime Figure out where you're going before you go there: he was told that a long time ago. John Updike figurestimelong
