John Updike quotes - page 12
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
![[Harry, to Nelson] "Don't forget, there's a Depression coming." (John Updike)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/02/john-updike-coming-depression-1016502.webp)
It was true of my generation, that the movies were terribly vivid and instructive. There were all kinds of things you learned. Like the 19th century novels, you saw how other social classes lived - especially the upper classes. So in a funny way, they taught you manners almost. But also moral manners. The gallantry of a Gary Cooper or an Errol Flynn or Jimmy Stewart. It was ethical instruction of a sort that the church purported to be giving you, but in a much less digestible form. Instead of these remote, crabbed biblical verses, you had contemporary people acting out moral dilemmas. Just the grace, the grace of those stars - not just the dancing stars, but the way they all moved with a certain grace. All that sank deep into my head, and my soul.
John Updike
