John Updike Literature Quotations

Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.

We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.

Truth should not be forced; it should simply manifest itself, like a woman who has in her privacy reflected and coolly decided to bestow herself upon a certain man.

There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes.

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

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

But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.