# Quote — John Updike, Self-Consciousness

> Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity (in the Harvard sense) of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we’re dead we’re dead?

- Author: [John Updike](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-updike.md)
- Book: [Self-Consciousness](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-updike/self-consciousness.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Updike#Self-Consciousness_:_Memoirs_(1989)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-updike/self-consciousness/among-the-repulsions

## More from this book

> The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-updike/self-consciousness/the-essential-self.md)

> To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-updike/self-consciousness/to-say-that.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-updike/self-consciousness/celebrity-is-a-mask.md)