John Updike
15 quotations
Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
School is where you go between when your parents can't take you, and industry can't take you.
Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.
America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.
I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.
The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.
Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.
Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it cost them.
Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.
By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.
Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self-solitude is the enemy of well-being.
Art imitates Nature in this; not to dare is to dwindle.
Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.
Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life.
Sex is like money; only too much is enough.