760 Quotes by John Updike

The physicists are getting down to the nitty-gritty, they’ve really just about pared things down to the ultimate details, and the last thing they ever expected to happen is happening. God is showing through.

You cannot but learn more of the world’s heft, as you take it now into your hands.

What seems to sell books is good word-of-mouth, not promotion tours. I’m too old to believe that media promotion of a book really matters. What matters is how it will look 100 years from now, not how many copies are sold.

It frightens him to think of her this way. It makes her seem, in terms of love, so vast.

The reel of your real life unwound only once.

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.

You always find things you didn’t know you were going to say, and that is the adventure...

They felt the poorhouse would always be there, exempt from time. That some residents died, and others came, did not occur to them; a few believed that the name of the prefect was still Mendelssohn. In a sense the poorhouse would indeed outlast their homes. The old continue to be old-fashioned, though their youths were modern. We grow backward, aging into our father’s opinion and even into those of our grandfathers.

I think... no, I am positive... that you are the most unattractive man I have ever met in my entire life. You know, in the short time we’ve been together, you have demonstrated EVERY loathsome characteristic of the male personality and even discovered a few new ones. You are physically repulsive, intellectually retarded, you’re morally reprehensible, vulgar, insensitive, selfish, stupid, you have no taste, a lousy sense of humor and you smell. You’re not even interesting enough to make me sick.