John Hoyer Updike
Quotes
You can't say anything honest to women, they have minds like the FBI.
There's more to being a human being than having your own way.
[A grandchild barely able to remember Harry's own mother] But can Ma be no more than that in this child's memory? Do we dwindle so fast to next to nothing?
...a sense of defeat the years have brought back to him, after what seemed for a while to be triumphs.
Rabbit feels as if the human race is a vast colourful jostling bristling parade in which he is limping and falling behind.
When she was a girl nobody had money but people had dreams.
He didn't have a worry in the world back then. He was in paradise and didn't know it.
[Judy, 8, is watching TV] He tells Judy, "Better pack it in, sweetie. Another big day tomorrow: we're going to go to the beach and sailing." But his voice comes out listless, and perhaps that is the saddest loss time brings, the lessening of excitement about anything.
...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.
[Re Florida] Just not being senile is considered great down here.
"Things change," says Mr Shimada. "Is world's sad secret."
He supposes they pretty much have the picture. Most people do, in life. People know more than they let on.
