Quotes from John Updike
Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life.
- John Updike
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.
- John Updike
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.
- John Updike
The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified.
- John Updike
The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.
- John Updike
We are most alive when we're in love.
- John Updike
It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.
- John Updike
We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.
- John Updike
Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.
- John Updike
Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath.
- John Updike
So much love, too much love, it is our madness, it is rotting us out, exploding us like dandelion polls.
- John Updike
We are cruel enough without meaning to be.
- John Updike