760 Quotes by John Updike

So much love, too much love, it is our madness, it is rotting us out, exploding us like dandelion polls.

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.

Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being somebody, to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his over-animation. One can either see or be seen.

It’s the strange thing about you mystics, how often your little ecstasies wear a skirt.

Looking foolish does the spirit good. The need not to look foolish is one of youth’s many burdens; as we get older we are exempted from more and more.

America teaches its children that every passion can be transmuted into an occasion to buy.

If you’re telling me I’m not mature, that’s one thing I don’t cry over since as far as I can make out it’s the same thing as being dead.

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

You know how it is with fathers, you never escape the idea that maybe after all they’re right.