760 Quotes by John Updike

Dollars had once gathered like autumn leaves on the wooden collection plates; dollars were the flourishing sign of God’s specifically American favor, made manifest in the uncountable millions of Carnegie and Mellon and Henry Ford and Catholina Lambert. But amid this fabled plenty the whiff of damnation had cleared of dollars and cents the parched ground around Clarence Wilmot.

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.

I really don’t want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto.

There always comes in September a parched brightness to the air that hits Rabbit two ways, smelling of apples and blackboard dust and marking the return to school and work in earnest, but then again reminding him he’s suffered another promotion, taken another step up the stairs that has darkness at the head.

How can you respect the world when you see it’s being run by a bunch of kids turned old?

The assurance from the dictionary had melted in the night.

That’s why we love disaster, Harry sees it, puts us back in touch with guilt and sends us crawling back to God.

Was she asleep? He groped beside the bed, among his underclothes, for his wristwatch. He would soon learn, in undressing, to leave it lying discreetly visible. Its silent gold-rimmed face, a tiny banker’s face, stated that he had already been out to lunch an hour and forty minutes. A sour burning began to revolve in his stomach.

She had willed herself open to him and knew that the chemistry of love was all within her, her doing. Even his power to wound her with neglect was a power she had created and granted...