John Updike: Quotes about the world (page 2)

John Updike was American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. Explore interesting quotes on world.
John Updike: 480   quotes 10   likes

“[Annabelle] "…health care is an expanding field, as the world fills up with people that would have been dead a hundred years ago. Everybody winds up needing care, pretty much."”

John Updike book Rabbit Remembered

Rabbit Remembered (2000)

People , Health , World , Dead

“Each set of woes can be left behind in a folder in a drawer at the end of the day. Whereas in the outside world there is no end of obligation, no protection from the needs and grief of others.”

John Updike book Rabbit Remembered

Rabbit Remembered (2000)

World

“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.”

John Updike

Source: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 4

War , World , Sex , Madness

“Charlie interrupts impatiently, "Pain is where it's at for punks. Mutilation, self-hatred, slam dancing. For these kids today, ugly is beautiful. That's their way of saying what a lousy world we're giving them. No more rain forests. Toxic waste. You know the drill."”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Pain , World , Beauty , Way

“Man is an animal, but a social animal. Society for its manifold blessings asks in exchange sacrifice and compromise. Concession is the world's walking gait. Fevers and hallucinations sweep over us, it is true; but be they permitted to infect the public body, slaughter shall result. Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.”

John Updike

Act I
Buchanan Dying (1974)

Animals , World , Madness