"How circumstantial reality is! Facts are like..." - Quote by John Updike
How circumstantial reality is! Facts are like individual letters, with their spikes and loops and thorns, that make up words: eventually they hurt our eyes, and we long to take a bath, to rake the lawn, to look at the sea.
More by John Updike
“It's so hard to make a good tee shot after a birdie.”
“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.”
“The illusion is an agreement between the reader and writer that this [story] will be like life. The emotional temperature drops when you have footnotes.”
More on Reality
“The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable.”
“The study of law is sublime, and its practice vulgar.”
“All those little congruences and arabesques you prepared with such delicate anticipatory pleasure are gobbled up as if by pigs at a pastry cart.”
More on Facts
“Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them.”
“The facts of the case will always have the better of [an] argument.”
“You must look at facts, because they look at you.”