John Updike: Trending quotes (page 8)

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

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

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

“There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.”

“[at the hospital, Janice speaking to Dr Olman in Harry's presence in the ward] "What's wrong with his heart, exactly?"”

“Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.”

“If society is the prison, families are the cells, with no time off for good behavior. Good behavior in fact tends to lengthen the sentence.”

“[Thelma] "…You make your own punishments in life, I honest to God believe that. You get exactly what you deserve. God sees to it."”

“Like Ronnie said, we're alone. All we have is family, for what it's worth.”

“When you're retired, you get into your routines and other people, even so-called loved ones, become a strain.”

“[re the human heart] That little electric twitch: without it we're so much rotting meat.”

“One out of three hundred and twelve Americans is a bore, for instance, and a healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.”

“[Re Florida] Just not being senile is considered great down here.”

“"Don't forget, there's a Depression coming."
"Who says?"
"I say; everybody says!"
"Why would we have a Depression?"
"Because we don't have any discipline! We're drowning in debt! We don't even own our own country any more!"”

“…he tries to view his life as a brick of sorts, set in place with a slap in 1933 and hardening ever since, just one life in rows and walls and blocks of lives.”

“Weeds don't know they're weeds.”

“He’s not that young, he’s turned twenty-three, and what makes him feel foolish among these people, he’s married. Nobody else here looks married. There is sure nobody else pregnant, that it shows. It makes him feel put on display, as a guy who didn’t know better.”

“[Pru, to Harry] She tells him, "You were one of the things I liked about Nelson. Maybe I thought Nelson would grow into somebody like you."
"Maybe he did. You don't get to see what a bastard I can be."”

“The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.”