John Updike: Trending quotes

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“If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.”

John Updike

“A Foreword for Younger Readers,” Assorted Prose (1965)

“Charlie asks her for a Perrier with lime. She says that San Pellegrino is what they have. He says it's all the same to him. Fancy water is fancy water.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.”

John Updike

The New Yorker (November 1992)

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

John Updike

Source: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 6

“At last, small witches, goblins, hags,
And pirates armed with paper bags,
Their costumes hinged on safety pins,
Go haunt a night of pumpkin grins.”

John Updike

October, A Child's Calendar (1965)

“Women: you never know which side they want to dance on.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“Hard to believe God is always listening, never gets bored.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“[Nelson] "… I get none of the things a man's supposed to get from a wife."
"What are those?" Janice is truly interested; she has never heard a man spell it out.
He makes a cross evasive face. "You know – don't play naïve. Reassurance. Affection. Make the guy think he's great even if he isn't."”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

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

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“When I was a boy, the bestselling books were often the books that were on your piano teacher's shelf. I mean, Steinbeck, Hemingway, some Faulkner. Faulkner actually had, considering how hard he is to read and how drastic the experiments are, quite a middle-class readership. But certainly someone like Steinbeck was a bestseller as well as a Nobel Prize-winning author of high intent. You don't feel that now. I don't feel that we have the merger of serious and pop — it's gone, dissolving. Tastes have coarsened. People read less, they're less comfortable with the written word.”

John Updike

Salon interview (2000)

“When we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside; we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept — the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation.”

John Updike

Source: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 6

“No matter how hard you climb, there are always the rich above you, who got there without effort. Lucky stiffs, holding you down, making you discontent so you buy more of the crap advertised on television.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“Freedom, that he always thought was outward motion, turns out to be this inward dwindling.”

John Updike book Rabbit Redux

Rabbit Redux (1969)

“An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause.”

John Updike book Couples

Source: Couples (1968), Ch. 2

“[Judy, 8, is watching TV] He tells Judy, "Better pack it in, sweetie. Another big day tomorrow: we're going to go to the beach and sailing." But his voice comes out listless, and perhaps that is the saddest loss time brings, the lessening of excitement about anything.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

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

John Updike book Rabbit Redux

Rabbit Redux (1969)

“He didn't have a worry in the world back then. He was in paradise and didn't know it.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.”

John Updike book Couples

Source: Couples (1968), Ch. 5

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

John Updike book Rabbit Redux

Rabbit Redux (1969)