“Vocations drying up, nobody wants to be selfless any more, everybody wants their fun.”

—  John Updike , book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)
Context: Now nuns have blended into everybody else or else faded away. Vocations drying up, nobody wants to be selfless any more, everybody wants their fun. No more nuns, no more rabbis. No more good people, waiting to have their fun in the afterlife. The thing about the afterlife, it kept this life within bounds somehow, like the Russians. Now there's just Japan, and technology, and the profit motive, and getting all you can while you can.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Vocations drying up, nobody wants to be selfless any more, everybody wants their fun." by John Updike?
John Updike photo
John Updike 240
American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, an… 1932–2009

Related quotes

Iggy Pop photo

“Everybody's a little more worldly now, and there's more exposure to things. When I made Fun House, back in 1970, nobody wanted to interview me. It was wonderful.”

Iggy Pop (1947) American rock singer-songwriter, musician, and actor

Interview interview (1999)
Context: Everybody's a little more worldly now, and there's more exposure to things. When I made Fun House, back in 1970, nobody wanted to interview me. It was wonderful. I was like one of those little white things you find living under rocks, that every once in a while people pull up by mistake and go, "aagh!" But now everybody has a video camera, and that may have changed the nature of "the message from below," as it were.

Joe Louis photo

“Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. ”

Joe Louis (1914–1981) American boxer
Lev Grossman photo

“Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.”

Lev Grossman The Magician King

Source: The Magician King

Mark Twain photo

“Definition of a classic — something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Quoting or paraphrasing a Professor Winchester in "Disappearance of Literature" http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=TwaSpee.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=52&division=div1, speech at the Nineteenth Century Club, New York, 20 November 1900, in Mark Twain's Speeches (1910), ed. William Dean Howells, p. 194 http://books.google.com/books?id=7etXZ5Q17ngC&pg=PA194
Variant: A classic – something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

P. J. O'Rourke photo

“Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

Kurt Vonnegut photo

“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

Jean Cocteau photo

“In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)

“Everybody has a vocation to some form of life-work. However, behind that call (and deeper than any call), everybody has a vocation to be a person to be fully and deeply human in Christ Jesus.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

“The trouble with the death penalty has always been that nobody wanted it for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off.”

Albert Pierrepoint (1905–1992) English executioner

Executioner: Pierrepoint. Harrap 1974. p. 211.

Izabel Goulart photo

“No boys for me growing up! I was so skinny and tall. Everybody called me a giraffe. … I had no boobs and no butt and nobody liked me, I was so lonely. All the boys would come to me and want advice because they wanted my friend. But nobody ever wanted me — high school was a very sad, lonely time.”

Izabel Goulart (1984) Brazilian model

"Pop Tarts: Victoria's Scarring Secrets: Teased for Being Too Skinny" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,314106,00.html, 30 November 2007, Fox News.

Related topics