John Updike quotes - page 9

Any decent kind of world, you wouldn't need all these rules. (John Updike)
When Rabbit first began to drive the road was full of old fogeys going too slow and now it seems nothing but kids in a hell of a hurry, pushing. Let 'em by, is his motto. Maybe they'll kill themselves on a telephone pole in the next mile. He hopes so. View quote
John Updike
This airport has been designed with big windows viewing the runways, so if there's a crash everybody can feast upon it with their own eyes. The fireball, the fuselage doing a slow skidding twirl, shedding its wings. View quote
John Updike
When you're retired, you get into your routines and other people, even so-called loved ones, become a strain. View quote
John Updike
You don't know what you don't know. View quote
John Updike
He learned this much selling cars: offer the customer something he doesn't want, to make what he half-wants look better. View quote
John Updike
Who wants to fish, if you're halfway civilised? Dangling some dead meat in front of some poor brainless thing and then pulling him up by a hook in the roof of his mouth? Cruellest thing people do is fish. View quote
John Updike
Something about being helpless in bed, people hit you up for sympathy. They've got you where they want you. View quote
John Updike
A woman you've endured such a gnawing of desire for, you can't help bearing a little grudge against, when the ache is gone. View quote
John Updike
"...Nelson'll be thirty-three in a couple of months." He thinks it would be a waste of breath, and maybe offensive, to explain to Mr Shimada that at that same age Jesus Christ was old enough to be crucified and redeem mankind. View quote
John Updike
Things change," says Mr Shimada. "Is world's sad secret. (John Updike)
...he feels a stifling uselessness in things, a kind of atomic decay whereby the precious glowing present turns, with each tick of the clock, into the leaden slag of history. View quote
John Updike
[Janice] Looking back from this distance, she can't think any more that Harry was all to blame for their early troubles, he had just been trying life on too: life and sex and making babies and finding out who you are. View quote
John Updike
[Ronnie to Nelson] "For a guy who snorted an entire car agency up his nose, you're one to talk about con games." View quote
John Updike
[Mim to Nelson] "Your father wasn't stupid, he just acted stupid." View quote
John Updike
We are fated to love one another; we hardly exist outside our love, we are just animals without it, with a birth and a death and constant fear between. Our love has lifted us up, out of the dreadfulness of merely living. View quote
John Updike
How can you respect the world when you see it's being run by a bunch of kids turned old? View quote
John Updike
Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books. View quote
John Updike
... her frantic wish to undo denied, her soul forever suspended, like a staring fetus in formaldehyde, in guilt. View quote
John Updike
[At news that Nelson got himself a counsellor] Harry feels a jealous, resentful pang. His boy is being taken over. His fatherhood hasn't been good enough. They're calling in the professionals. View quote
John Updike
[Nelson, to Harry] "...I keep feeling hassled." "That's life, Nelson. Hassle." (John Updike)
Don't forget, there's a Depression coming." "Who says?" "I say; everybody says!" "Why would we have a Depression?" "Because we don't have any discipline! We're drowning in debt! We don't even own our own country any more! View quote
John Updike
[re a woman on TV on 'Wheel of Fortune'] She makes you proud to be a two-legged mammal. View quote
John Updike
[Mim, to Nelson, about Annabelle, aged 39] "This little nursie's not your problem. At thirty-nine, everybody's their own problem..." View quote
John Updike
[Harry, to Thelma, about Janet] "She never really figured out how the world is put together but she's still working at it." View quote
John Updike