Quotes from John Updike

Also ist mein Sohn ein Simpel.' In einer Hinsicht. Aber der größte Teil der Menschheit ist so. Weil es sonst zu schwer zu ertragen ist, Mensch zu sein. Im Gegensatz zu den Tieren wissen wir zu viel. Sie, die anderen Tiere, wissen gerade genug, um ihren Job zu machen und zu sterben. Um zu essen, zu schlafen, zu vögeln, Babys zu kriegen und zu sterben.

Wir wissen eben nicht, was einer tun sollte, wir haben nicht mehr wir früher Antworten parat; wir wursteln uns bloß weiter durch und versuchen, nicht nachzudenken.

the books of the 1920s and '30s that are most inviting, with their handy size, generous margins, and sharp letterpress type.

Without death, now, there couldn't be life. Health," he said with a little smiling roll of his lower lip, "is an animal condition. Now most of our ill-health comes from two places-the brain and the back. We made two mistakes; one was to stand up and the other was to start thinking. It strains the spine and the nerves. It makes tension and the brain makes the body.

Getting old could be jolly, if you stayed strong.

full of the belief that a conspiracy of women upholds the world.

She went through some motions of housekeeping. Why was there nothing to sleep in but beds that had to be remade, nothing to eat from but dishes that had to be washed?

Sleep this night is not a dark haunted domain the mind must consciously set itself to invade, but a cave inside himself, into which he shrinks while the claws of the bear rattle like rain outside. Sunshine

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Those born rich are harder to please than those born poor.

Cunt would be a good flavor of ice cream, Sealtest ought to work on it.

When the first blooms came they were like the single big flower Oriental prostitutes wear on the sides of their heads…But when the hemispheres of blossom appear in crowds they remind him of nothing so much as hats worn by cheap girls to church on Easter.

The army was kept in as good state of fitness as the funds would allow.

There's no medical expense can break us now. They called LBJ every name in the book but believe me he did a lot of good for the little man. Wherever he went wrong, it was his big heart betrayed him. These pretty boys in the sky right now, Nixon'll hog the credit but it was the Democrats put 'em there, it's been the same story ever since I can remember, ever since Wilson—the Republicans don't do a thing for the little man.

also on June 22nd JB vetoes the Homestead Bill...This bill, which proposes to give him (the honest poor man,...) land at an almost nominal price, out of the property of the government, will go far to demoralize the people and repress this noble spirit of independence. It may introduce among us those pernicious social theories which have proved so disastrous in other countries.

They found themselves involved willy-nilly in a futile but urgent search for the truth.

this country since 1865 has an unenviable record for political violence. Four presidents, plus the attempts on Truman and both Roosevelts—as you know, Teddy was actually wounded, in his unsuccessful campaign in 1912—not to mention Huey Long. There isn't a country west of the Balkans with any kind of the same record. The Prime Ministers of England go everywhere with a single bodyguard.

An earth hard as iron lay locked beneath a sky whose mottled clouds spit snow like ashes sucked up a chimney and then dispersed with the smoke.

In her rare moods of liberation she held for him the danger that she would disclose great riches within herself, showing him the depths of loss frozen over by their marriage.

Just yesterday, it seems to him, she's stopped being pretty.

Television was soon to eclipse print's inky cloud with its magnetic flare of electrons, pulling millions from their reading chairs to the viewing couch.

A writer of fiction, a professional liar, is paradoxically obsessed with what is true.

I don't recall inclement weather on a fair day.

All these prohibitions old people think up. I think people should be free to do what they want unless it's hurting someone else.