irony is a way of having one's cake while appearing to eat it. John Updike More Quotes by John Updike More Quotes From John Updike My only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me-to give the mundane its beautiful due. John Updike beautifulgivingreality President George] Bush talked to us like we were a bunch of morons and we ate it up. Can you imagine, the Pledge of Allegiance, read my lips-can you imagine such crap in this day and age? John Updike lipspresidentage Life is a video game. No matter how good you get, you are always zapped in the end. John Updike videogameslife There's always something new by looking at the same thing over and over. John Updike something-newwriting An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause. John Updike doeloveworld Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear. John Updike voiceshould-havewriting New York is of course many cities, and an exile does not return to the one he left. John Updike citiesnew-yorkdoe I can't bear to finish things, beyond a certain point they get heavy. There's something so dead about a finished painting. John Updike finishingpaintingbears Human was the music, natural was the static. John Updike mysterynaturalscience An old essay by John Updike begins, 'We live in an era of gratuitous inventions and negative improvements.' That language is general and abstract, near the top of the ladder. It provokes our thinking, but what concrete evidence leads Updike to his conclusion ? The answer is in his second sentence : 'Consider the beer can.' To be even more specific, Updike was complaining that the invention of the pop-top ruined the aesthetic experience of drinking beer. 'Pop-top' and 'beer' are at the bottom of the ladder, 'aesthetic experience' at the top. John Updike drinkingbeerthinking Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them. John Updike respectcostliterature I think books should have secrets, like people do. John Updike should-havebookthinking The United States, democratic and various though it is, is not an easy country for a fiction-writer to enter: the slot between the fantastic and the drab seems too narrow. John Updike united-statescountryfiction I was made to feel I could do things. If you get this feeling early and can hold it until you're 15, you tend to never lose it. John Updike madefeelingsfeels Yes, there is a ton of information on the web, but much of it is egregiously inaccurate, unedited, unattributed and juvenile. John Updike juvenileinformation Within your own generation-the same songs, the same wars, the same attitudes toward those wars, the same rules and radio shows in the air-you can gauge the possibilities and impossibilities. With a person of another generation, you are treading water, playing with fire. John Updike songattitudewar Affairs, ... , like everything else, ask too much. John Updike affairaskstoo-much Being a famous writer is a little like being a tall dwarf. You're on the edge of normality. John Updike dwarvesfamelittles As souls must cry when they awaken in tiny babies and find themselves far from heaven John Updike soulbabyheaven History. The more of it you have the more you have to live it. After a little while there gets to be too much of it to memorize and maybe that's when empires start to decline. John Updike empirestoo-muchlittles
