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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.

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
Children
Boyhood
Would
Childhood
Difference
Boys
Environment
Differences
Alone
Must

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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.
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The Englishman is under no constitutional obligation to believe that all men are created equal. The American agony is therefore scarcely intelligible, like a saint's self-flagellation viewed by an atheist.
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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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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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Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle, and crushed by remonstrance.
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By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.
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What we need is progress with an escape hatch.
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Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.
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It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.
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I never made a decision in my life that wasn't one hundred per cent selfish.
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The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds are flown.
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Our tears fatten upon our memories of joy.
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