John Updike Quotes & Sayings (Page 4)

“From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.”

“Arabic is very twisting, very beautiful. The call to prayer is quite haunting; it almost makes you a believer on the spot.”

“The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion.”

“Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.”

“We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.”

“There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes.”

“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.”

“For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity.”

“My life is, in a sense, trash. My life is only that of which the residue is my writing.”

“Nature refuses to rest.”