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Hope bases vast premises on foolish accidents, and reads a word where in fact only a scribble exists.

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
Fact
Premises
Hope
Reads
Facts
Vast
Accidents
Foolish
Bases
Exists
Scribble
Word
Scribbles

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It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.
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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.
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Nothing feels worse than other people's good times.
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I was made to feel I could do things. If you get this feeling early and can hold it until you're 15, you tend to never lose it.
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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.
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Man makes one journey all his living days, Down through the realms of music and of art Down through the halls of fame and glorious praise Down through the tears and triumphs of the heart To some sweet woman waiting some place there. For her he builds his cities and makes war, Seeks gold and glorious wealth to store.
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What we need is progress with an escape hatch.
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The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance perversity is the souls very life.
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Man is a means for turning things into spirit and turning spirit into things.
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Fraud makes the world go round.
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There is always a chance of failure, of producing something totally unnecessary. But I guess that chance of failure is what makes tightrope walking, race-car driving.
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But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to go through with it.
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Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.
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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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The great thing about the dead, they make space.
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Government money in the arts, I fear, can only deflect artists from their responsibility to find an authentic market for their products.
John Updike
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When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.
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Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.
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Revolution is just one crowd taking power from another.
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Human was the music, natural was the static.
John Updike