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American art in general... takes to surreal exaggerations and metaphors but its Puritan work ethic has little use for the playful self-indulgence behind Parisian Surrealism.

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
Takes
Ethic
American
Exaggeration
Exaggerations
Use
Indulgence
Parisian
Art
Metaphor
Surrealism
Littles
Ethics
Playful
General
Puritan
Little
Behinds
Metaphors
Self
Behind
Surreal
Work

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Writers take words seriously-perha ps the last professional class that does-and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors and careless typesetters and obtuse and malevolent reviewers into the lap of the ideal reader.
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Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn.
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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.
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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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It's not up to us what we learn, but merely whether we learn through joy or through pain.
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The first breath of adultery is the freest after it, constraints aping marriage develop.
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If you look at the best-seller list, it is mostly thrillers. Very few books attempt to create an image of the life we live. I knew there were writers who wore tweed coats and lived in Connecticut and somehow made a living, and that's what I aimed to do. I've tried to write as well as I can with books that say something to any reader.
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The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and he does it without destroying something else.
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The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.
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Being naked approaches being revolutionary going barefoot is mere populism.
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You imagine a reader and try to keep the reader interested. That's storytelling. You also hope to reward the reader with a sense of a completed design, that somebody is in charge, and that while life is pointless, the book isn't pointless. The author knows where he is going. That's form.
John Updike
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There is this quality, in things, of the right way seeming wrong at first.
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Mozart's music gives us permission to live.
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Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath.
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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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Art imitates Nature in this not to dare is to dwindle.
John Updike
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The Florida sun seems not much a single thing overhead but a set of klieg lights that pursue you everywhere with an even white illumination.
John Updike
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In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman's good nature.
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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There was clearly great charm and worth in a sport so quaintly perverse in its basic instructions. Hit down to make the ball rise. Swing easy to make it go far. Finish high to make it go straight.
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