John Updike Quotes, Thoughts and images

It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.

Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self- solitude is the enemy of well- being.

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

Life is a roller coaster, you have your ups and downs unless you fall off.

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

Living is a compromise, between doing what you want and doing what other people want.

I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head.

Sex is like money; only too much is enough.

It's great to have an enemy. Sharpens your senses.

If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.

Our lives fade behind us before we die.

We are most alive when we're in love.

Do what the heart commands. The heart is our only guide.

Chaos is God's body. Order is the Devil's chains.

The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.

Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.

The days are short, The sun a spark Hung thin between The dark and dark.

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

The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance; perversity is the souls very life.

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.

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

I think books should have secrets, like people do.

We are cruel enough without meaning to be.

The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion.

Mozart's music gives us permission to live.