What is the past, after all, but a vast sheet of darkness in which a few moments, pricked apparently at random, shine? John Updike More Quotes by John Updike More Quotes From John Updike One of the cool, chaste countries - Canada or Sweden. John Updike swedencanadacountry Mozart's music gives us permission to live. John Updike musicpermissiongiving We are fated to love one another; we hardly exist outside our love, we are just animals without it, with a birth and a death and constant fear between. Our love has lifted us up , out of the dreadfulness of merely living. John Updike our-lovebirthanimal The Florida sun seems not much a single thing overhead but a set of klieg lights that pursue you everywhere with an even white illumination. John Updike illuminationfloridalight It is not enough for a story to flow. It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts. John Updike flowstonesstories Let us not mock God with metaphor, Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence; Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the Faded credulity of earlier ages: Let us walk through the door. John Updike eventsagedoors There was a beauty here bigger than the hurtling beauty of basketball, a beauty refined from country pastures, a game of solitariness, of waiting, waiting for the pitcher to complete his gaze toward first base and throw his lightning, a game whose very taste, of spit and dust and grass and sweat and leather and sun, was America. John Updike basketballbaseballcountry Life is a razor, you are always in hot water or a scrape. John Updike hotwaterlife Appealingness is inversely proportional to attainability. John Updike attraction It's not up to us what we learn, but merely whether we learn through joy or through pain. John Updike learningpaineducation Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying. John Updike writingphilosophyart School is where you go between when your parents can't take you and industry can't take you. John Updike educationwittyfunny The world ... is full of people who never knew what hit 'em, their lives are over before they wake up. John Updike wake-uplifepeople Writing doesn't require drive. It's like saying a chicken has to have drive to lay an egg. John Updike chickenseggswriting Hope bases vast premises on foolish accidents, and reads a word where in fact only a scribble exists. John Updike scribblesfoolishfacts Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn. John Updike shoesbabyart In memory's telephoto lens, far objects are magnified. John Updike old-memorieslensesmemories Life is a nacho. It can be yummy-crunchy or squishy-yucky. It just depends on how long it takes for you to start eating it. John Updike yummylifelong Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner. John Updike aristocracymarriageteacher 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
