Author: John Updike

Quotes

I don't know; I think I'd be gloomy without some faith that there is a purpose and there is a kind of witness to my life.

I don't know; I think I'd be gloomy without some faith that there is a purpose and there is a kind of witness to my life.

- John Updike

Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.

Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.

- John Updike

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.

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.

- John Updike

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

- John Updike

Most Americans haven't had my happy experience of living for thirteen years in a seventeenth-century house, since most of America lacks seventeenth-century houses.

Most Americans haven't had my happy experience of living for thirteen years in a seventeenth-century house, since most of America lacks seventeenth-century houses.

- John Updike

The study of literature threatens to become a kind of paleontology of failure, and criticism a supercilious psychoanalysis of authors.

The study of literature threatens to become a kind of paleontology of failure, and criticism a supercilious psychoanalysis of authors.

- John Updike

Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

- John Updike

I was raised in the Depression, when there was a great sense of dog-eat-dog and people fighting over scraps.

I was raised in the Depression, when there was a great sense of dog-eat-dog and people fighting over scraps.

- John Updike

The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion.

The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion.

- John Updike

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