Quotes from John Updike

Ogni cosa sotto il cielo finisce, e se si ritiene che la temporalità ne infici il valore, allora nulla che sia reale ottiene mai il successo.

She felt an infinite, widening magic in this, and also the element of protest which made people want to nail down pieces of a world that was always sliding away from under them; the world was an assembly line that kept spilling goods forward, into a heap of the lost and forgotten. With the protest came a gaiety, that of small defiant victories over time, creating things to keep.

But now nuns have blended into everybody else or else faded away. Vocations drying up, nobody wants to be selfless anymore, everybody wants their fun.

little is more precious in an affair for a man than being welcomed into a house he has done nothing to support, or more momentous for the woman than this welcoming, this considered largesse, her house his, his on the strength of his cock alone, his cock and company, the smell and amusement and weight of him — no buying you with mortgage payments, no blackmailing you with shared children, but welcomed simply, into the walls of yourself, an admission dignified by freedom and equality.

A mood of stirred-up unsatisfied desire at whose fringes licks the depressing idea that nothing matters very much, we'll all soon be dead.

Ever since his heart attack there is a gnawing in his stomach whose cause he can't locate until he realizes it is the terror of being trapped inside his perishing body, like being in a prison cell with a madman who might decide to kill him at any moment

About being mortal- I suppose it affects different people in different ways, but for me there's never been a thinning out. Being alive, no matter how sick I feel, feels absolute. You're absolutely alive and when you're not you'll be absolutely something else.

and of AIDS. The virus too small to imagine travelling through our fluids, even a drop or two of saliva or cunt slime, and unlocking our antibodies with its little picks, so that our insides lose their balance and we topple into pneumonia, into starvation. Love and death, they can't be pried apart anymore.

The day is declining through the white afternoon to the long blue spring evening. He drives past a corner where someone is practicing on a trumpet

As they deepen together he feels impatience that through all their twists they remain separate flesh; he cannot dare enough, now that she is so much his friend in this search; everywhere they meet a wall. The body lacks voice to sing its own song.

Nature leads you up like a mother and as soon as she gets her little contribution leaves you with nothing.

She stands by the edge of the bed, baggy in nakedness, and goes off into the bathroom to do her duty. There's that in women repels him: handle themselves like an old envelope. Tubes into tubes, wash away men's dirt—insulting, really. Faucets cry. The more awake he gets the more depressed he is. From deep in the pillow he stares at the horizontal strip of stained-glass church window that shows beneath the window shade. Its childish brightness comes from years away.

as if in the pre-dawn, before light begins to lift edges into being.

He] languidly went through the motions, like a disbelieving angel, misplaced in all this adult foolishness.

The thought of these people having the bold idea of leaving their homes to come here and pray pleases and reassures Rabbit, and moves him to close his own eyes and bow his head with a movement so tiny that Ruth won't notice. Help me, Christ. Forgive me. Take me down the way. Bless Ruth, Janice, Nelson, my mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Springer, and the unborn baby. Forgive Tothero and all the others. Amen.

Come here," he asks. The idea of making it while the churches are full excites him. "No," Ruth says. She is really a little sore. His believing in God grates against her.

Your heart lifts forever through that blank sky.

The good ones develop give. In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman's good nature.

The only way to get somewhere, you know, is to figure out where you're going before you go there.

When I ran from Janice I made an interesting discovery. The tears bubble over her lids and the salty taste of pool-water is sealed into her mouth. If you have the guts to be yourself, he says, other people'll pay your price.

Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.

Ruth was funny. Her bowling was awful; she just sort of paddled up to the line and dropped the ball. Plok.

Din vânzarea maÈ™inilor a înv??at È™i el m?car atâta: ofer?-i clientului ceva ce nu vrea, ca s?-i par? mai atr?g?tor ceea ce-È™i doreÈ™te doar pe jum?tate

Odat? cu nenorocirea, vine È™i o uÈ™urare, o înseninare: porÈ›iuni vaste ale vieÈ›ii tale sunt date la o parte, devin dintr-odat? neînsemnate.