John Updike: Use

John Updike was American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. Explore interesting quotes on use.

John Updike: 480 quotes10 likes

“A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.”

Introduction to The Best American Short Stories of 1984 (1984)

“He had a sensation of anxiety and shame, a sensitivity acute beyond usefulness, as if the nervous system, flayed of its old hide of social usage, must record every touch of pain.”

On Franz Kafka, quoted in report on Great Books discussion groups, New York Times (28 February 1985)

“Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life.”

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

“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.”

Act I
Buchanan Dying (1974)