Quote

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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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
Littles
Pale
Blinking
Look
Ghost
Outdoor
Little
Instant
Overcomes
Looks
Overcoming
Clinging
Men
Plant
Ghosts
Constant
Printing
Four
Emerge
Light
Sharp
Indoor

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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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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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Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self- solitude is the enemy of well- being.
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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.
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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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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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How sad, how strange, we make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation.
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If you're telling me I'm not mature, that's one thing I don't cry over since as far as I can make out it's the same thing as being dead.
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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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All love is betrayal, in that it flatters life. The loveless man is best armed.
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We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies.
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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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There is the fear that you somehow neglected to say what was really yours to say.
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Nothing feels worse than other people's good times.
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There is always a chance of failure, of producing something totally unnecessary. But I guess that chance of failure is what makes tightrope walking, race-car driving.
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Customs and convictions change respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.
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Fiction is in danger of becoming a kind of poetry. Only other poets read it. Only other fiction writers care about it.
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Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.
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Our tears fatten upon our memories of joy.
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Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed.
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