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To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man.

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
Men
State
Obligations
Social
Realities
Reality
Appetite
Dream
Tension
Around
Fellow
States
Obligation
Human
Fellows
Humans
Dreams
Appetites

More quotes by John Updike

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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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Wickedness was like food: once you got started it was hard to stop the gut expanded to take in more and more.
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I can't bear to finish things, beyond a certain point they get heavy. There's something so dead about a finished painting.
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Yes, there is a ton of information on the web, but much of it is egregiously inaccurate, unedited, unattributed and juvenile.
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School is where you go between when your parents can't take you and industry can't take you.
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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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It is easy to love people in memory the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.
John Updike
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One does not go to Moscow to get fat.
John Updike
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For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do - they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.
John Updike
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Our tears fatten upon our memories of joy.
John Updike
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Hoping to fashion a mirror, the lover doth polish the face of his beloved until he produces a skull.
John Updike
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Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.
John Updike
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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.
John Updike
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Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.
John Updike
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What we need is progress with an escape hatch.
John Updike
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Men emerge pale from the little printing plant at four sharp, ghosts for an instant, blinking, until the outdoor light overcomes the look of constant indoor light clinging to them.
John Updike
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Not judginess, but openness and curiosity are our proper business. I'm still trying to educate myself. I don't think you need to keep rehearsing your instincts. Far better to seek out models of what you can't do.
John Updike
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You do things and do things and nobody really has a clue.
John Updike
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There are some women that don't do it for some men. That's why they turn out so many models.
John Updike
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President George] Bush talked to us like we were a bunch of morons and we ate it up. Can you imagine, the Pledge of Allegiance, read my lips-can you imagine such crap in this day and age?
John Updike