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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.

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
Hours
Traffic
Words
Lots
Moments
Patience
Like
Mouth
Mouths
Tunnel
Hour
Jam
Inside
Tunnels
Doubt
Rush

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I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent canvas upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken.
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I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.
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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.
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The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires.
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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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Russia is the only country of the world you can be homesick for while you're still in it.
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The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.
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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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The first breathe of adultery is the freest.
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Our tears fatten upon our memories of joy.
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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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Government money in the arts, I fear, can only deflect artists from their responsibility to find an authentic market for their products.
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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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Baseball is meant to be fun, and not all the solemn money-men in fur-collared greatcoats, not all the scruffy media cameramen and sour-faced reporters that crowd around the dugouts can quite smother the exhilarating spaciousness and grace of this impudently relaxed sport, a game of innumerable potential redemptions and curious disappointments.
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I can't bear to finish things, beyond a certain point they get heavy. There's something so dead about a finished painting.
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Life is a nacho. It can be yummy-crunchy or squishy-yucky. It just depends on how long it takes for you to start eating it.
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Movies took you right up to the edge but kept you safe.
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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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Do what the heart commands. The heart is our only guide.
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