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John Updike Quotes

1932–2009 United States

John Hoyer Updike (18 March 1932 – 27 January 2009) was an American novelist, poet, critic and short-story writer.

United States
Academics
Critics
Essayists
Journalists

Also known as: Updike, John

Random John Updike quote

162 quotes

Any decent kind of world, you wouldn't need all these rules.

Rabbit Redux (1969)

..."That disease he has does an awful job on you. Your lungs fill up."

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

When she was a girl nobody had money but people had dreams.

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

The only way to get somewhere, you know, is to figure out where you're going before you go there.

Rabbit, Run (1960)

Something about being helpless in bed, people hit you up for sympathy. They've got you where they want you.

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Thirty-six years old and he knows less than when he started. With the difference that now he knows how little he'll always know.

Rabbit Redux (1969)

Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself.

His insides are beginning to feel sickly. The pain of the world is a crater all these syrups and pills a thousandfold would fail to fill.

Rabbit Redux (1969)

Mim has hung up. She has a life to get on with.

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

His wife is, it occurs to Harry, a channel that can't be switched. The same slightly too-high forehead, the same dumb stubborn slot of a mouth, day after day, same time, same station.

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

"Tell me, Nelson, I'm just curious. How does it feel to have smoked up your parents' house in crack?"

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

He supposes they pretty much have the picture. Most people do, in life. People know more than they let on.

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

As if pity is, as he has been taught, not a helpless outcry but a powerful tide that could redeem the world...

Rabbit, Run (1960)

She closes her eyes and wordlessly thinks of all the misery sex has caused the world...

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Figure out where you're going before you go there: he was told that a long time ago.

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

"Things change," says Mr Shimada. "Is world's sad secret."

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Women, once sex gets out in the open, they become monsters. You're a creep if you fuck them and a creep if you don't.

Rabbit is Rich (1981)

There is very little thanks in history. Dog eat dog.

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Not his problem. Fewer and fewer things are.

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.

Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Updike (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.