"We're past the age of heroes and hero kings... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting."
John UpdikeTiny Panda Quotes
Quotes by John Updike
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"What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit."
John Updike"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."
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."
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"Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life."
John Updike"That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds."
John Updike"Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner."
John Updike"Sex is like money; only too much is enough."
John Updike"A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience."
John Updike"Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them."
John Updike"In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity."
John Updike"The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education."
John Updike"Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea."
John Updike