Quote #111

John Updike's genius is best excited by the lyric possibilities of tragic events that, failing to justify themselves as tragedy, turn unaccountably into comedies.

More from John Updike

  1. He left the self-conscious literary demimonde of New York for the quiet infidelities of New England.
  2. Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.
  3. What art offers is space- a certain breathing room for the spirit.
  4. We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.
  5. We are most alive when we're in love.
  6. The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.
  7. The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds …
  8. The ending is where the reader discovers whether he has been reading the same story the writer thought he was writing.

All John Updike quotes