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It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian.

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
Excuse
Possesses
Rents
Accepting
Excuses
Antibodies
Lying
Deceived
Overlooks
Difficult
Deceiving
Permits
Firsts
Deceit
Repair
First
Suspicion
Accepts
Lateness
Great
Permit
Deceive
Patching
Time
Absurd
Adultery
Quotidian

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The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and he does it without destroying something else.
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Looking foolish does the spirit good. The need not to look foolish is one of youth's many burdens as we get older we are exempted from more and more.
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How sad, how strange, we make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation.
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Movies took you right up to the edge but kept you safe.
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The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds are flown.
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Nothing feels worse than other people's good times.
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Life, too much of it, and not enough. The fear that it will end some day, and the fear that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.
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Fiction is in danger of becoming a kind of poetry. Only other poets read it. Only other fiction writers care about it.
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Journalism has not only its social stimulations but its aesthetic virtues. An invitation into print, from however suspect a source, is an opportunity to make something beautiful, to discover within oneself a treasure that would otherwise have remained buried.
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The breezes taste Of apple peel. The air is full Of smells to feel- Ripe fruit, old footballs, Burning brush, New books, erasers, Chalk, and such. The bee, his hive, Well-honeyed hum, And Mother cuts Chrysanthemums. Like plates washed clean With suds, the days Are polished with A morning haze.
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Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.
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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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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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A cynic is a kind of romantic who has aged.
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You do things and do things and nobody really has a clue.
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The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.
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There is the fear that you somehow neglected to say what was really yours to say.
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We are fated to love one another we hardly exist outside our love, we are just animals without it, with a birth and a death and constant fear between. Our love has lifted us up , out of the dreadfulness of merely living.
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Russia is the only country of the world you can be homesick for while you're still in it.
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What we need is progress with an escape hatch.
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