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Being naked approaches being revolutionary going barefoot is mere populism.

John Updike

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John Updike
Age: 76 †
Born: 1932
Born: March 18
Died: 2009
Died: January 27
Art Critic
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
John Hoyer Updike
Revolutionary
Naked
Mere
Populism
Approach
Barefoot
Beauty
Populist
Going
Nudity
Approaches
Rebellious

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Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.
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New York is of course many cities, and an exile does not return to the one he left.
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When we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept - the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation.
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The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.
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Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.
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Do what the heart commands. The heart is our only guide.
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Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that Mankind has invented yet.
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There was clearly great charm and worth in a sport so quaintly perverse in its basic instructions. Hit down to make the ball rise. Swing easy to make it go far. Finish high to make it go straight.
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You can never get the smell of smoke out. Like the smell of failure in life.
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There is the fear that you somehow neglected to say what was really yours to say.
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Revolution is just one crowd taking power from another.
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All love is betrayal, in that it flatters life. The loveless man is best armed.
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The Englishman is under no constitutional obligation to believe that all men are created equal. The American agony is therefore scarcely intelligible, like a saint's self-flagellation viewed by an atheist.
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Hemingway describes literary New York as a bottle full of tapeworms trying to feed on each other.
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The illusion is an agreement between the reader and writer that this [story] will be like life. The emotional temperature drops when you have footnotes.
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Basically it's true that my own life has been my chief window for life in America, beginning with my childhood and the conflicts, the struggles, the strains that I felt in my own family.
John Updike
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Fraud makes the world go round.
John Updike
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Days, pale slices between nights, they blend, not exactly alike, transparencies so lightly tinted that only stacked all together do they darken to a fatal shade.
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Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
John Updike
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Life is a roller coaster, you have your ups and downs unless you fall off.
John Updike