John Updike
John Updike

Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

John Updike
John Updike

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

John Updike
John Updike

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.

John Updike
John Updike

We are most alive when we're in love.

John Updike
John Updike

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

John Updike
John Updike

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.

John Updike
John Updike

Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.

John Updike
John Updike

Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.

John Updike
John Updike

Sex is like money; only too much is enough.

John Updike
John Updike

The cinema has done more for my spiritual life than the church. My ideas of fame, success and beauty all originate from the big screen. Whereas Christian religion is retreating everywhere and losing more and more influence; film has filled the vacuum and supports us with myths and action-controlling images.

John Updike
John Updike

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.

John Updike
John Updike

The dwelling places of Europe have an air of inheritance, or cumulative possession - a hive occupied by generations of bees.

John Updike
John Updike

Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.

John Updike
John Updike

Golf's ultimate moral instruction directs us to find within ourselves a pivotal center of enjoyment: relax into a rhythm that fits the hills and swales, and play the shot at hand - not the last one, or the next one, but the one at your feet, in the poison ivy, where you put it.

John Updike
John Updike

Mars has long exerted a pull on the human imagination. The erratically moving red star in the sky was seen as sinister or violent by the ancients: The Greeks identified it with Ares, the god of war; the Babylonians named it after Nergal, god of the underworld. To the ancient Chinese, it was Ying-huo, the fire planet.

John Updike
John Updike

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

John Updike
John Updike

Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.

John Updike
John Updike

We're past the age of heroes and hero kings... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.

John Updike
John Updike

To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client.

John Updike
John Updike

Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.