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Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self- solitude is the enemy of well- being.

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
Enemy
Wells
Perfectionism
Well
Extreme
Self
Extremes
Acceptance
Solitude
Perfection
Creation

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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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Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.
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What you lose as you age is witnesses, the ones that watched from early on and cared, like your own little grandstand.
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There is always a chance of failure, of producing something totally unnecessary. But I guess that chance of failure is what makes tightrope walking, race-car driving.
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We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies.
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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.
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Pressed, I would define spirituality as the shadow of light humanity casts as it moves through the darkness of everything that can be explained.
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It is easy to love people in memory the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.
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The - writing is a kind of act of aggression, and a person who is not aggressive in his normal, may I say, intercourse with humanity might well be an aggressive writer.
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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 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.
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How can you respect the world when you see it's being run by a bunch of kids turned old?
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Affairs, ... , like everything else, ask too much.
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New York is of course many cities, and an exile does not return to the one he left.
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You do things and do things and nobody really has a clue.
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One does not go to Moscow to get fat.
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