Frases de John Updike

„Qualquer atividade torna-se criativa e prazerosa quando quem a pratica se interessa por fazê-la bem feita, ou até melhor.“

—  John Updike

„O primeiro suspiro de adultério é a liberdade; depois dele, constrangimentos imitam o desenvolvimento do casamento.“

—  John Updike

The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.
Couples‎ - Página 456, John Updike - Knopf, 1968 - 458 páginas

„Sexo é como dinheiro, apenas o demais é suficiente.“

—  John Updike

Sex is like money, only too much is enough
Couples‎ - Página 437, John Updike - Knopf, 1968 - 458 páginas

„Mulheres: você nunca sabe de que lado elas querem dançar.“

—  John Updike

„Se ela tivesse nascido na hora certa, eles a teriam queimado em Salem.“

—  John Updike

„Os sonhos tornam-se realidade. Sem essa possibilidade, a natureza não nos incentivaria a tê-los.“

—  John Updike

„A cultura brasileira reflete mais a africana do que a americana. Nos E. U. A. temos o Jazz e quase só isso. Não existem figuras como Machado de Assis, um mulato considerado um dos maiores escritores do país.“

—  John Updike

„Difícil de acreditar que Deus está sempre ouvindo, nunca fica entediado.“

—  John Updike

„A América é uma grande conspiração para fazer você feliz.“

—  John Updike

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy
The early stories, 1953-1975‎ - Página 413, John Updike - A.A. Knopf, 2003, ISBN 1400040728, 9781400040728 - 838 páginas

„Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.“

—  John Updike

Fonte: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 6
Contexto: Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being “somebody,” to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. One can either see or be seen.

„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

Fonte: My Father's Tears and Other Stories

„Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.“

—  John Updike

Fonte: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 3

„The city overwhelmed our expectations.“

—  John Updike

On London, in “A Madman,” New Yorker (22 December 1962)
Contexto: The city overwhelmed our expectations. The Kiplingesque grandeur of Waterloo Station, the Eliotic despondency of the brick row in Chelsea … the Dickensian nightmare of fog and sweating pavement and besmirched cornices.

„I miss only, and then only a little, in the late afternoon, the sudden white laughter that like heat lightning bursts in an atmosphere where souls are trying to serve the impossible.“

—  John Updike, livro The Centaur

The Centaur (1963)
Contexto: I miss only, and then only a little, in the late afternoon, the sudden white laughter that like heat lightning bursts in an atmosphere where souls are trying to serve the impossible. My father for all his mourning moved in the atmosphere of such laughter. He would have puzzled you. He puzzled me. His upper half was hidden from me, I knew best his legs.

„I think “taste” is a social concept and not an artistic one.“

—  John Updike

Interview in New York Times Book Review (10 April 1977). later published in Conversations with John Updike (1994) edited by James Plath, p. 113
Contexto: 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.

„It's no disgrace to, in the end, restore order. And punish the wicked and, in some way, reward the righteous.“

—  John Updike

Salon interview (2000)
Contexto: In the old movies, yes, there always was the happy ending and order was restored. As it is in Shakespeare's plays. It's no disgrace to, in the end, restore order. And punish the wicked and, in some way, reward the righteous.

„It was true of my generation, that the movies were terribly vivid and instructive.“

—  John Updike

Salon interview (2000)
Contexto: 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.

„The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks.“

—  John Updike, livro Rabbit, Run

Rabbit, Run (1960)
Contexto: He feels the truth: the thing that has left his life has left irrevocably; no search would recover it. No flight would reach it. It was here, beneath the town, in these smells and these voices, forever behind him. The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks.

„We live down here among shadows, shadows among shadows.“

—  John Updike

Act I
Buchanan Dying (1974)
Contexto: Facts are generally overesteemed. For most practical purposes, a thing is what men think it is. When they judged the earth flat, it was flat. As long as men thought slavery tolerable, tolerable it was. We live down here among shadows, shadows among shadows.