John Updike
American novelist, essayist, and poet
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
But my main debt, which may not be evident, was to Hemingway; it was he who showed us all how much tension and complexity unalloyed dialogue can convey, and how much poetry lurks in the simplest nouns and predicates.
—John Updike, American novelist, essayist, and poet, The Early Stories: 1953 - 1975, 2003
Posted on December 17, 2003 at 10:19 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.
—John Updike, American novelist, essayist, and poet, Assorted Prose, 1965
Posted on November 20, 1998 at 2:36 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.
—John Updike, American novelist, essayist, and poet, Assorted Prose, 1965
Posted on October 7, 2002 at 7:02 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
I would rather have as my patron a host of anonymous citizens digging into their own pockets for the price of a book or a magazine than a small body of enlightened and responsible men administering public funds. I would rather chance my personal vision of truth striking home here and there in the chaos of publication that exists than attempt to filter it through a few sets of official, honorably public-spirited scruples.
—John Updike, American novelist, essayist, and poet, Hugging the Shore
Posted on May 13, 2003 at 12:24 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
I think "taste" is a social concept and not an artistic one. I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.
—John Updike, American novelist, essayist, and poet, Interview, New York Times Book Review
Posted on March 19, 2002 at 1:42 PM
|
