The world ... is full of people who never knew what hit 'em, their lives are over before they wake up. John Updike More Quotes by John Updike More Quotes From John Updike Of nothing but me I sing, lacking another song. John Updike lackingsong Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. John Updike bostoneggseaster Being a divorcee in a small town is a little like playing Monopoly; eventually you land on all the properties. John Updike townslandlittles Fraud makes the world go round. John Updike fraudroundsworld 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 literaturetruthmen Why does life feel, to us as we experience it, so desperately urgent and so utterly pointless at the same time? John Updike urgentdoefeels A few places are especially conducive to inspiration - automobiles, church - public places. I plotted Couples almost entirely in church - little shivers and urgencies I would note down on the program, and carry down to the office Monday. John Updike coupleinspirationmonday Students present themselves...like a succession of CDs whose shimmering surface gives no clue to their contents without the equipment to play them. John Updike cdsplaygiving Accent the ugly until it becomes gorgeous. John Updike accentsuglygorgeous I'm always looking for insights into the real Doris Day because I'm stuck with this infatuation and need to explain it to myself. John Updike infatuationrealneeds I moved to New England partly because it has a real literary past. The ghosts of Hawthorne and Melville still sit on those green hills. The worship of Mammon is also somewhat lessened there by the spirit of irony. I don't get hay fever in New England either. John Updike hay-feverrealpast Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position. John Updike atheismatheistintellectual Nothing feels worse than other people's good times. John Updike good-timesfeelspeople The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop. John Updike constraintsadulteryfirsts Movies took you right up to the edge but kept you safe. John Updike moviesafeinspiring Photography is the first art wherein the tool does most of the work. John Updike photographydoeart From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few. John Updike spyinfancy-issecret Unlike the older, more humanly shaped arts, which begin with a seed and accumulate their form organically, photography clips its substance out of an actual continuum. John Updike substancephotographyart Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading. John Updike madnessgovernmentpeculiar Narrative and metaphysics alike become flimsy and frivolous if they venture too far from the home base of all humanism - the single, simple human life that we all more or less lead, with its crude elementals of nurture and appetite, love and competition, the sunshine of well-being and the inevitable night of death. We each live this tale. Fiction has no reason to be embarrassed about telling the same story again and again, since we all, with infinite variations, experience the same story. John Updike sunshinesimplehome
