John Updike cytaty

strona 5

„Nikt nie może nigdzie dojść, jeśli skądś nie odszedł.”

„Sukces bywa również karany: trzeba spotykać się z ludźmi, których przedtem można było ignorować.”

„Ludzie mogą należeć do nas tylko we wspomnieniach.”

„Dzisiaj młodzi mają więcej problemów, niż mieliśmy my - mówi Jack (…) Nie chodzi tylko o AIDS i całą resztę. Istnieje pewien głód, nie wiem, absolutu, kiedy wszystko jest takie relatywne, a wszystkie siły ekonomiczne narzucają im szybki zarobek i kredyt na karcie (…) Kiedy rzeczywistość nie jest prosta, ludzie chcą powrotu do naiwnej prostoty, czerni i bieli, prawdy i fałszu. (…) Inaczej bycie człowiekiem byłoby zbyt trudne. W przeciwieństwie do innych zwierząt wiemy za dużo. One wiedzą tylko tyle, żeby wypełnić swoje zadanie i umrzeć. Jedzą, śpią, pieprzą się, rodzą młode i umierają. (…) Chcę tylko powiedzieć, że dzieciaki takie jak Ahmad muszą mieć coś, czego nie daje im już społeczeństwo. Społeczeństwo nie pozwala im już zachować niewinności. Ci szaleni Arabowie mają rację - hedonizm, nihilizm, to wszystko, co mamy do zaoferowania.(…) Młodzi muszą podejmować teraz więcej decyzji niż kiedyś, bo dorośli nie potrafią im podpowiedzieć, co mają robić. My sami nie wiemy, co robić, nie mamy gotowych odpowiedzi tak jak kiedyś; po prostu trwonimy czas, starając się za dużo nie myśleć. Nikt nie bierze na siebie odpowiedzialności, więc robią to dzieciaki, przynajmniej niektóre… to pragnienie, żeby zrobić coś dobrego, żeby być dobrym, żeby gdzieś się zapisać… do wojska, orkiestry dętej, gangu, chóru, samorządu szkolnego, nawet do harcerstwa. (…) Na korytarzach serce ci się kraje, jak widzisz te twarze, tak pełne nadziei, oni chcą być d o b r z y, chcą coś znaczyć. Oczekują czegoś od samych siebie. To jest Ameryka, wszyscy czegoś oczekujemy, nawet socjopaci mają całkiem dobrą opinię na swój temat. Wiesz, kim ostatecznie zostają ci, z którymi są najgorsze problemy wychowawcze? Gliniarzami albo nauczycielami w liceum. Chcą zadowolić społeczeństwo, chociaż się do tego nie przyznają. Chcą być czegoś warci, gdybyśmy tylko mogli im wskazać, co jest wartościowe.”

„Życie nie jest czymś, co można k o n t r o l o w a ć. Nie kontrolujemy oddechu, trawienia, bicia serca. Życie trzeba po prostu przeżyć. Trzeba pozwolić mu się t o c z y ć.”

„Nie wiesz jeszcze zbyt dużo o miłości. On jest moim facetem. Gdyby nie ja, co by miał? Byłby żałosny i może za bardzo go kocham i nie chcę, żeby się o tym przekonał. Dla czarnego faceta wychowanego w biednej rodzinie w New Prospect sprzedawanie swojej kobiety nie jest żadną hańbą, jest sposobem na udowodnienie męskości.”

“He could have gone over that night and faced the music but how much music is a man supposed to face?”

“Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity (in the Harvard sense) of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we’re dead we’re dead?”

“One of the satisfactions of fiction, or drama, or poetry from the perpetrator’s point of view is the selective order it imposes upon the confusion of a lived life; out of the daily welter of sensation and impression these few verbal artifacts, these narratives or poems, are salvaged and carefully presented.”

“He skates saucily over great tracts of confessed ignorance.”

“[Harry listening to car radio] …he resents being made to realise, this late, that the songs of his life were as moronic as the rock the brainless kids now feed on, or the Sixties and Seventies stuff that Nelson gobbled up – all of it designed for empty heads and overheated hormones, an ocean white with foam, and listening to it now is like trying to eat a double banana split the way he used to. It's all disposable, cooked up to turn a quick profit. They lead us down the garden path, the music manufacturers, then turn around and lead the next generation down with a slightly different flavour of glop.
Rabbit feels betrayed. He was reared in a world where war was not strange but change was: the world stood still so you could grow up in it. He knows when the bottom fell out. When they closed down Kroll's, Kroll's that had stood in the centre of Brewer all those years, bigger than a church, older than a courthouse, right at the head of Weiser Square there,… […] So when the system just upped one summer and decided to close Kroll's down, just because shoppers had stopped coming in because the downtown had become frightening to white people, Rabbit realised the world was not solid and benign, it was a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of money. You just passed through, and they milked you for what you were worth, mostly when you were young and gullible. If Kroll's could go, the courthouse could go, the banks could go. When the money stopped, they could close down God himself.”

“There is very little thanks in history. Dog eat dog.”

“I secretly understood: the primitive appeal of the hearth. Television is — its irresistible charm — a fire.”

“[Nelson] "…People are crazy. At times when I'm with clients I can't see the difference between them and me, except for the structure we're all in. I get paid, a little, and they get taken care of, a little."”

“His voice is hurrying, to keep up with his brain.”

“A woman you've endured such a gnawing of desire for, you can't help bearing a little grudge against, when the ache is gone.”

“The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified.”

“The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.”

“Cars used to have such dashing shapes, like airplanes, back when gas was cheap, twenty-five cents a gallon.”

“…"That disease he has does an awful job on you. Your lungs fill up."”

“[Harry, talking about the doctor who came to the ward and then went away. ] "That guy has a thing about potato chips and hot dogs. If God didn't want us to eat salt and fat, why did He make them taste so good?"”

“What more fiendish proof of cosmic irresponsibility than a Nature which, having invented sex as a way to mix genes, then permits to arise, amid all its perfumed and hypnotic inducements to mate, a tireless tribe of spirochetes and viruses that torture and kill us for following orders?”

“Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.”

“She closes her eyes and wordlessly thinks of all the misery sex has caused the world…”

“I would rather have as my patron a host of anonymous citizens digging into their own pockets for the price of a book or a magazine than a small body of enlightened and responsible men administering public funds. I would rather chance my personal vision of truth striking home here and there in the chaos of publication that exists than attempt to filter it through a few sets of official, honorably public-spirited scruples.”

“The smell of good advice always makes Rabbit want to run the other way.”

“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.”