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

More quotes by John Updike

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To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client.
John Updike
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Having children is something we think we ought to do because our parents did it, but when it is over the children are just other members of the human race, rather disappointingly.
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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.
John Updike
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An American in London...cannot but be impressed and charmed by the city. The momumentality of Washington, the thriving business of New York, the antique intimacy of Boston, plus a certain spacious and open feeling reminiscent of Denver and San Francisco-all these he finds combined for his pleasure.
John Updike
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Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.
John Updike
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How sad, how strange, we make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation.
John Updike
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American art in general... takes to surreal exaggerations and metaphors but its Puritan work ethic has little use for the playful self-indulgence behind Parisian Surrealism.
John Updike
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A cynic is a kind of romantic who has aged.
John Updike
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Men emerge pale from the little printing plant at four sharp, ghosts for an instant, blinking, until the outdoor light overcomes the look of constant indoor light clinging to them.
John Updike
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Life is a roller coaster, you have your ups and downs unless you fall off.
John Updike
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The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified.
John Updike
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All love is betrayal, in that it flatters life. The loveless man is best armed.
John Updike
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Within your own generation-the same songs, the same wars, the same attitudes toward those wars, the same rules and radio shows in the air-you can gauge the possibilities and impossibilities. With a person of another generation, you are treading water, playing with fire.
John Updike
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We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.
John Updike
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Life is a video game. No matter how good you get, you are always zapped in the end.
John Updike
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The New England spirit does not seek solutions in a crowd raw light and solitariness are less dreaded than welcomed as enhancers of our essential selves.
John Updike
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All men are mortal, and therefore all men are losers our profoundest loyalty goes out to the failed.
John Updike
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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.
John Updike
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Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath.
John Updike
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I never made a decision in my life that wasn't one hundred per cent selfish.
John Updike