John Updike Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old John Updike quotes, John Updike sayings, and John Updike proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.'

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them. John Updike
Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience. John Updike
The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it. John Updike
On the single strand of wire strung to bring our house electricity, grackles and starlings neatly punctuated an invisible sentence. John Updike
The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience. John Updike
In a way, gluttony is an athletic feat, a stretching exercise. John Updike
A cynic is a kind of romantic who has aged. John Updike
Mars has long exerted a pull on the human imagination. The erratically moving red star in the sky was seen as sinister or violent by the ancients: The Greeks identified it with Ares, the god of war; the Babylonians named it after Nergal, god of the underworld. To the ancient Chinese, it was Ying-huo, the fire planet. John Updike
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
Vagueness and procrastination are ever a comfort to the frail in spirit. John Updike
If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price. John Updike
Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism. John Updike
When you look into a mirror rorrim a otni kool uoy nehW it is not yourself you see ees uoy esruoy ton si ti but a kind of apish error rorre hsipa fo dnik a tub posed in fearful symmetry yrtemmys lufraef ni desop John Updike
Cities aren't like people; they live on and on, even though their reason for being where they are has gone downriver and out to sea. John Updike
Hobbies take place in the cellar and smell of airplane glue. John Updike
We are most alive when we're in love. John Updike
Living is a compromise, between doing what you want and doing what other people want. John Updike
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
Of plants tomatoes seemed the most human, eager and fragile and prone to rot. John Updike
The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don’t—whichever seems likelier to win an effect. John Updike
The theme of old age doesn't seem to fascinate Hollywood. John Updike
The dwelling places of Europe have an air of inheritance, or cumulative possession - a hive occupied by generations of bees. John Updike
No matter how hard you climb, there are always the rich above you, who got there without effort. Lucky stiffs, holding you down, making you discontent so you buy more of the crap advertised on television. John Updike
Fiction is burdened for me with a sense of duty. John Updike
Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself. John Updike
The Chinese food arrives. Delicious saliva fills his mouth. He really hasn't had any since Texas. He loves this food that contains no disgusting proofs of slain animals, a bloody slab of cow haunch, a hen's sinewy skeleton; these ghosts have been minced and destroyed and painlessly merged with the shapes of insensate vegetables, plump green bodies that invite his appetite's innocent gusto. Candy. John Updike
Upon shaving off one's beard. The scissors cut the long-grown hair; the razor scrapes the remnant fuzz. Small-jawed, weak-chinned, bug-eyed, I stare at the forgotten boy I was. John Updike
If she'd been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem. John Updike
J.D. Salinger wrote a masterpiece, The Catcher in the Rye, recommending that readers who enjoy a book call up the author; then he spent his next twenty years avoiding the telephone. John Updike
The golf swing is like a suitcase into which we are trying to pack one too many things. John Updike