American - Novelist | March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009
Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.
John Updike
LifeNatureRainSkyGraceEarth
We are most alive when we're in love.
LoveValentine's DayAliveMost
Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed.
HopeArtDeepProfessionalismBoring
We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.
DailyGreatOthersTakeSaneOur
A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.
LeadershipLeaderQualityMenPeople
A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.
WallsDoorChoicesDoorsKnowRight
To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man.
DreamsYour DreamsManYouHuman
Hobbies take place in the cellar and smell of airplane glue.
AirplanePlaceSmellGlueHobbies
Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.
SportsPastChildGolfIdiotBecome
The substance of fictional architecture is not bricks and mortar but evanescent consciousness.
ArchitectureConsciousnessBricks
Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.
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Imagine writing a poem with a sweating, worried-looking boy handing you a different pencil at the end of every word. My golf, you may say, is no poem; nevertheless, I keep wanting it to be one.
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