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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.

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
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Upon
Submission
Perfect
Stretch
Hope
Transparent
Nature
Canvas
Beautiful
Useful
Truth
Large
Must
Perspective
Disarmed
Would
Taken
Imprint

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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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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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Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.
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One does not go to Moscow to get fat.
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In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman's good nature.
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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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There was a beauty here bigger than the hurtling beauty of basketball, a beauty refined from country pastures, a game of solitariness, of waiting, waiting for the pitcher to complete his gaze toward first base and throw his lightning, a game whose very taste, of spit and dust and grass and sweat and leather and sun, was America.
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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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Being naked approaches being revolutionary going barefoot is mere populism.
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Movies took you right up to the edge but kept you safe.
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I would especially like to re-court the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time.
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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 heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance perversity is the souls very life.
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The first breath of adultery is the freest after it, constraints aping marriage develop.
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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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Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that Mankind has invented yet.
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Of nothing but me I sing, lacking another song.
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Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself.
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Women, fire in their crotch, won't burn out, begin by fighting off pricks, end by going wild hunting for one that still works.
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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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