"Suddenly summoned to witness something great and..." - Quote by John Updike
Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.
More by John Updike
“Writing fiction is like music. You have to keep it moving. You can have slow movements but there has to be a sense of momentum, of going someplace. You hear a snatch of Beethoven and it has a sense of momentum that is unmistakably his. That's a nice quality if you can do it in fiction.”
“Baseball skills schizophrenically encompass a pitcher's, a batter's and a fielder's.”
“How can the planet keep turning and turning and not get so bored it explodes?”
More on Human Nature
“For what do we live, but to make sport by subjecting our neighbors to endless discretionary review for minor additions?”
“Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves.”
“I cannot find a faithful message-bearer," he wrote to his friend, the scholar Atticus. "How few are they who are able to carry a rather weighty letter without lightening it by reading.”
More on Perspective
“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”
“It is a good thing to stand away from the canvas from time to time and take a full view of the picture.”
“Come out of the azure. Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape.”