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John Updike

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John Updike

Born: March 18, 1932

Died: January 27, 2009

Nationality: American

Occupation: Novelist

Biography: John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic.

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John Updike

“It rots a writer's brain, it cretinises you. You say the same thing again and again, and when you do that happily you're well on the way to being a cretin. Or a politician.”

- John Updike

Source/Notes: Interview in London Observer (30 August 1987)

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John Updike

“For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do — they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.”

- John Updike

Source/Notes: The Female Body, Michigan Quarterly Review (1990)

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John Updike

“Vagueness and procrastination are ever a comfort to the frail in spirit.”

- John Updike

Source/Notes: In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996)

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John Updike

“Yes, there is a ton of information on the web, but much of it is egregiously inaccurate, unedited, unattributed and juvenile.”

- John Updike

Source/Notes: Speech at the Book Expo America Saturday Book & Author Breakfast (26 May 2006)

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John Updike

“The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can't take you and industry can't take you.”

- John Updike

Source/Notes: The Centaur (1963)

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John Updike

“I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent canvas upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken.”

- John Updike

Source/Notes: The Centaur (1963)

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John Updike

“It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks latenesses, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patchings to repair great rents in the quotidian.”

- John Updike

Source/Notes: Couples (1968)

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John Updike

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

- John Updike

Source/Notes: Rabbit, Run (1969)

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John Updike

“He had gone to church and brought back this little flame and had nowhere to put it on the dark damp walls of the apartment, so it had flickered and gone out. And he realised that he wouldn't always be able to produce this flame.”

- John Updike

Source/Notes: Rabbit, Run (1969)

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John Updike

“Time is our element, not a mistaken invader.”

- John Updike

Source/Notes: Rabbit Redux (1969)

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John Updike

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

- John Updike

Source/Notes: Rabbit Redux (1969)

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John Updike

“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.”

- John Updike

Source/Notes: Rabbit Redux (1969)

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John Updike

“All men are boys time is trying to outsmart.”

- John Updike

Source/Notes: Rabbit Redux (1969)

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John Updike

“Like water, blood must run or grow scum.”

- John Updike

Source/Notes: Rabbit Redux (1969)

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