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Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.

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
Honey
Becomes
Pain
Write
Shield
Able
Shields
Writing
Instantly
Kind
Transforming
Way
Hiding

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Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.
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Hemingway describes literary New York as a bottle full of tapeworms trying to feed on each other.
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We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.
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It's not up to us what we learn, but merely whether we learn through joy or through pain.
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President George] Bush talked to us like we were a bunch of morons and we ate it up. Can you imagine, the Pledge of Allegiance, read my lips-can you imagine such crap in this day and age?
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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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The great thing about the dead, they make space.
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The difficulty is, all swing thoughts decay, like radium. What burnt up the course on Wednesday has turned to lead on Sunday. Yet it does not do to have a blank mind: the terrible hugeness of the course will rush into the vacuum and the ball will spray like a thing berserk.
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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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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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Mozart's music gives us permission to live.
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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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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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All men are mortal, and therefore all men are losers our profoundest loyalty goes out to the failed.
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The first breathe of adultery is the freest.
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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 muttered hint, Remember, you have a stroke here, freezes my joints like a blast from Siberia.
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Living is a compromise, between doing what you want and doing what other people want.
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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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Writing doesn't require drive. It's like saying a chicken has to have drive to lay an egg.
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