Quote

For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do - they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.

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
Sex
Necessities
Body
Glowing
Must
Alike
Male
Males
Bodies
Messages
Signifiers
Female
Signaling

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Life is a roller coaster, you have your ups and downs unless you fall off.
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Writers take words seriously-perha ps the last professional class that does-and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors and careless typesetters and obtuse and malevolent reviewers into the lap of the ideal reader.
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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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Do what the heart commands. The heart is our only guide.
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Women, fire in their crotch, won't burn out, begin by fighting off pricks, end by going wild hunting for one that still works.
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I'm not against TV I don't go on the morning talk shows because I'm not invited. If I was, I might go.
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The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.
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Pressed, I would define spirituality as the shadow of light humanity casts as it moves through the darkness of everything that can be explained.
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Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture, whether of cover cloth, glazed jacket, or flexible paperback.
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Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.
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As I get older, my childhood self becomes more accessible to me, but selectively, in images as stylized and suspect as moments remembered from a novel read years ago.
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Wickedness was like food: once you got started it was hard to stop the gut expanded to take in more and more.
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The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun's just started.
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In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola they promoted thirst without quenching it.
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To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client.
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Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear.
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There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam.
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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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Human was the music, natural was the static.
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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.
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