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There is no such thing as static happiness. Happiness is a mixed thing, a thing compounded of sacrifices, and losses, and betrayals.

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
Mixed
Betrayal
Sacrifice
Loss
Betrayals
Happiness
Compounded
Thing
Losses
Static
Sacrifices

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The difference between a childhood and a boyhood must be this: our childhood is what we alone have had our boyhood is what any boy in our environment would have had.
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A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.
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Art imitates Nature in this not to dare is to dwindle.
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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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If you look at the best-seller list, it is mostly thrillers. Very few books attempt to create an image of the life we live. I knew there were writers who wore tweed coats and lived in Connecticut and somehow made a living, and that's what I aimed to do. I've tried to write as well as I can with books that say something to any reader.
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As I get older, my childhood self becomes more accessible to me, but selectively, in images as stylized and suspect as moments remembered from a novel read years ago.
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Students present themselves...like a succession of CDs whose shimmering surface gives no clue to their contents without the equipment to play them.
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Life is a roller coaster, you have your ups and downs unless you fall off.
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Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or more - a day to write. Some very good things have been written on an hour a day.
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Nothing feels worse than other people's good times.
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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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All men are mortal, and therefore all men are losers our profoundest loyalty goes out to the failed.
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Man makes one journey all his living days, Down through the realms of music and of art Down through the halls of fame and glorious praise Down through the tears and triumphs of the heart To some sweet woman waiting some place there. For her he builds his cities and makes war, Seeks gold and glorious wealth to store.
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Being naked approaches being revolutionary going barefoot is mere populism.
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Families, doing everything for each other out of imagined obligation and always getting in each other's way, what a tangle.
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We're past the age of heroes and hero kings. ... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.
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Photography is the first art wherein the tool does most of the work.
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Musicians are very mysterious and wonderful people to me I don't know how they do it.
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One does not go to Moscow to get fat.
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Our lives fade behind us before we die.
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