Quote

What more fiendish proof of cosmic irresponsibility than a Nature which, having invented sex as a way to mix genes, then permits to arise, amid all its perfumed and hypnotic inducements to mate, a tireless tribe of spirochetes and viruses that torture and kill us for following orders?

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
Proof
Mates
Irresponsibility
Following
Humankind
Permits
Sex
Genes
Viruses
Kill
Cosmic
Amid
Inducements
Health
Permit
Tribe
Fiendish
Invented
Mate
Perfumed
Order
Torture
Orders
Tireless
Nature
Arise
Tribes
Hypnotic
Way

More quotes by John Updike

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I did feel as though a number of critics had appointed themselves, when they sat down with a new book of mine, to rectify what they felt to be was my inflated reputation and so that the book in hand was not really given a chance but made a kind of weapon in the general attempt to bring me down to size.
John Updike
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It is not enough for a story to flow. It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts.
John Updike
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Of nothing but me I sing, lacking another song.
John Updike
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How sad, how strange, we make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation.
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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.
John Updike
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Life, just as we first thought, is playing grownup.
John Updike
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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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Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.
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Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.
John Updike
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Revolution is just one crowd taking power from another.
John Updike
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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.
John Updike
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In a country this large and a language even larger ... there ought to be a living for somebody who cares and wants to entertain and instruct a reader.
John Updike
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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.
John Updike
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Adversity in immunological doses has its uses more than that crushes.
John Updike
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Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn.
John Updike
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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.
John Updike
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Movies are, like sharp sunlight, merciless we do not imagine, we view.
John Updike
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There's always something new by looking at the same thing over and over.
John Updike
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The breezes taste Of apple peel. The air is full Of smells to feel- Ripe fruit, old footballs, Burning brush, New books, erasers, Chalk, and such. The bee, his hive, Well-honeyed hum, And Mother cuts Chrysanthemums. Like plates washed clean With suds, the days Are polished with A morning haze.
John Updike
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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.
John Updike