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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.

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
Thinking
Parent
Race
Rather
Human
Humans
Children
Members
Something
Parents
Think
Ought

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The first breath of adultery is the freest after it, constraints aping marriage develop.
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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.
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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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Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position.
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One of the nice things about having a lover, it makes you think about everything anew. The rest of your life becomes a kind of movie, flat and even rather funny.
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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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It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.
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A photograph presents itself not only as a visual representation, but as evidence, more convincing than a painting because of the unimpeachable mechanical means whereby it was made. We do not trust the artist's flattering hand but we do trust film, and shadows, and light.
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The moment when the finished book or, better yet, a tightly packed carton of finished books arrives on my doorstep is the moment of truth, of culmination its bliss lasts as much as five minutes, until the first typographical error or production flaw is noticed.
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Cities aren't like people they live on and on, even though their reason for being where they are has gone downriver and out to sea.
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From infancy on, we are all spies the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.
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Appealingness is inversely proportional to attainability.
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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.
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Life is a razor, you are always in hot water or a scrape.
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