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

„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

„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

„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

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

—  John Updike

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

—  John Updike

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

—  John Updike

„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.“

—  John Updike

Fonte: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 6

„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

„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.

„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.

„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.

„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.“

—  John Updike

On London, in “A Madman,” New Yorker (22 December 1962)

„His upper half was hidden from me, I knew best his legs.“

—  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.

„Vocations drying up, nobody wants to be selfless any more, everybody wants their fun.“

—  John Updike, livro Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)
Contexto: Now nuns have blended into everybody else or else faded away. Vocations drying up, nobody wants to be selfless any more, everybody wants their fun. No more nuns, no more rabbis. No more good people, waiting to have their fun in the afterlife. The thing about the afterlife, it kept this life within bounds somehow, like the Russians. Now there's just Japan, and technology, and the profit motive, and getting all you can while you can.

„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.