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25dcb65 Television was soon to eclipse print's inky cloud with its magnetic flare of electrons, pulling millions from their reading chairs to the viewing couch. John Updike
4697bb4 Tall as he is, there is no carrying the slope under his shirt as anything other than a loose gut, a paunch that in itself must weigh as much as a starving Ethiopian child. fat middle-age rabbit-angstrom John Updike
fea6875 The eddies his breath set in motion were destroying the smoke sculptures I was erecting. The pipestem was warm on my lower lip and I thought of lip cancer. I often think about how I will die, what disease or surgical procedure will have me in its tarantula grip, what indifferent hospital wall and weary night nurse will witness my last breath, my last second, the impossibly fine point to which my life will have been sharpened. John Updike
700065b Somehow Rabbit can't tear his attention from where the ball should have gone, the little ideal napkin of clipped green pinked with a pretty flag. John Updike
3c2554d He settles back with a small handful of cashews; dry-roasted, they have a little acid sting to them, the tang of poison that he likes. diet junk-food nuts rabbit-angstrom John Updike
b6965c6 In a way, gluttony is an athletic feat, a stretching exercise. gluttony rabbit-angstrom rationalization John Updike
1e63512 I love you," he says, and the fact that he doesn't makes it true." John Updike
fd1f521 He sounds to himself, saying this, like an impersonator; life, just as we first thought, is playing grownup. faking-it grownups impostor rabbit-angstrom John Updike
3ae9860 He imagines the plane exploding as it touches down, ignited by one of its glints, in a ball of red flame shadowed in black like you see on TV all the time, and he is shocked to find within himself, imagining this, not much emotion, just a cold thrill at being a witness, a kind of bleak wonder at the fury of chemicals, and relief that he hadn't been on the plane himself but was instead safe on this side of the glass, with his faint pronged s.. airport foreboding foreshadowing rabbit-angstrom John Updike
f24ea4c The soul needs something extra, a place outside matter where it can stand. The Bible--think of it as the primer of a language whereby we can talk to one another about what matters to us most. It is our starting point, not the end point. John Updike
0161935 The assurance from the dictionary had melted in the night. John Updike
5f29371 Walking toward the light. None of us lives in the light; we can only walk toward it, with the eyes and legs God has given us. John Updike
43c7f01 the books of the 1920s and '30s that are most inviting, with their handy size, generous margins, and sharp letterpress type. John Updike
71b0abe The army was kept in as good state of fitness as the funds would allow. taxes John Updike
8402c73 America teaches its children that every passion can be transmuted into an occasion to buy. John Updike
9996840 Harry has heard this before. Thelma's voice is dutiful and deliberately calm, issuing small family talk when both know that what she wants to discuss is her old issue, that flared up a minute ago, of whether he loves her or not, or why at least he doesn't need her as much as she does him. But their relationship at the start was established with her in pursuit of him, and all the years since, of hidden meetings, of wise decisions to end it a.. disdain disparity love rabbit-angstrom John Updike
7a501b9 All these prohibitions old people think up. I think people should be free to do what they want unless it's hurting someone else. John Updike
1809d2a Martyrs of a sort they were, these children, along with the town drunk, in his basketball sneakers and buttonless overcoat, draining blackberry brandy from a paper bag as he sat on his bench in Kazmierczak Square, risking nightly death by exposure; martyrs too of a sort were the men and women hastening to adulterous trysts, risking disgrace and divorce for their fix of motel love--all sacrificing the outer world to the inner, proclaiming wi.. John Updike
a8c5add Inside, upstairs, where the planes are met, the spaces are long and low and lined in tasteful felt gray like that cocky stewardess's cap and filled with the kind of music you become aware of only when the elevator stops or when the dentist stops drilling. Plucked strings, no vocals, music that's used to being ignored, a kind of carpet in the air, to cover up a silence that might remind you of death. airport foreshadowing memento-mori music rabbit-angstrom John Updike
2be0709 While some of us burned on the edges of life, insatiable and straining to see more deeply in, he sat complacently at the centre and let life come to him -- so much of it, evidently, that he could not keep track of his appointments. jealousy John Updike
426f766 But the nightmares were accurate enough: we are like a swarm of mosquitoes, crazy with thirst and doomed to be swatted. John Updike
ee81e1a 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." taste writing John Updike
edade7e I never heard enough damnation from your pulpit. Many mornings I had to strain to take hold of what you were saying, Reverend. I couldn't figure it out, and got dizzy listening, the way you were dodging here and there. A lot of talk about compassion for the less fortunate, I remember that. Never a healthy sign, to my way of thinking, too much fuss and feathers about the poor. They're with us always, the Lord Himself said. Wait till the next.. damnation death eternal-damnation god hell poor religion John Updike
6ca21aa Vagueness and procrastination are ever a comfort to the frail in spirit. vagueness John Updike
813f06e Die christliche Sitte, trage aufrecht dazusitzen wie bei einer Unterhaltungsveranstaltung, deutet darauf hin, dass Gott als Unterhaltungskunstler gilt, der von der Buhne entfernt und durch eine andere Nummer ersetzt werden kann, wenn er nicht mehr unterhalt. John Updike
0b64143 Vorsichtshalber haben sie das Etikett 'Kapitalismus' ersetzt durch solche, auf denen 'freie Marktwirtschaft' und 'Konsumkultur' steht, nur roch das immer noch zu sehr nach Hund-frisst-Hund, nach allzu vielen Verlierern und masslos abrahmenden Gewinnern. Wenn man die Hunde aber isch nicht miteinander balgen lasst, dann liegen sie den ganzen Tag im Zwinger und pennen. Im Grund besteht das Problem darin, dass die Gesellschaft anstandig zu sein.. John Updike
8d39e59 Also ist mein Sohn ein Simpel.' In einer Hinsicht. Aber der grosste Teil der Menschheit ist so. Weil es sonst zu schwer zu ertragen ist, Mensch zu sein. Im Gegensatz zu den Tieren wissen wir zu viel. Sie, die anderen Tiere, wissen gerade genug, um ihren Job zu machen und zu sterben. Um zu essen, zu schlafen, zu vogeln, Babys zu kriegen und zu sterben. John Updike
7fe6121 Wir wissen eben nicht, was einer tun sollte, wir haben nicht mehr wir fruher Antworten parat; wir wursteln uns bloss weiter durch und versuchen, nicht nachzudenken. John Updike
0d281c8 Trudnost' obshcheniia s ostriakami costoit v tom, chto oni smeshivaiut to, vo chto veriat, s tem, vo chto ne veriat lish' by skoree proizvesti zhelannyi effekt. John Updike
3cc1f91 Without death, now, there couldn't be life. Health," he said with a little smiling roll of his lower lip, "is an animal condition. Now most of our ill-health comes from two places-the brain and the back. We made two mistakes; one was to stand up and the other was to start thinking. It strains the spine and the nerves. It makes tension and the brain makes the body." John Updike
34d384e When the first blooms came they were like the single big flower Oriental prostitutes wear on the sides of their heads...But when the hemispheres of blossom appear in crowds they remind him of nothing so much as hats worn by cheap girls to church on Easter. John Updike
7d40504 Who'll hold families together, if everybody has to live? Living is a compromise, between doing what you want and doing what other people want. life living John Updike
2e95d87 Yes, well, years. Some die young; some are born old. John Updike
88984f5 Back From Vacation" "Back from vacation", the barber announces, or the postman, or the girl at the drugstore, now tan. They are amazed to find the workaday world still in place, their absence having slipped no cogs, their customers having hardly missed them, and there being so sparse an audience to tell of the wonders, the pyramids they have seen, the silken warm seas, the nighttimes of marimbas, the purchases achieved in foreign languages,.. John Updike
9cf6017 There's no medical expense can break us now. They called LBJ every name in the book but believe me he did a lot of good for the little man. Wherever he went wrong, it was his big heart betrayed him. These pretty boys in the sky right now, Nixon'll hog the credit but it was the Democrats put 'em there, it's been the same story ever since I can remember, ever since Wilson--the Republicans don't do a thing for the little man. John Updike
9d75d04 Just middle-aged. Ideas used to grab me too. It's not that you get better ideas, the old ones just get tired. After a while you see that even dollars and cents are just an idea. Finally the only thing that masters is putting some turds in the toilet bowl once a day. They stay real, somehow. Somebody came up to me and said, 'I'm God,' I'd say, 'Show me your badge. middle-age John Updike
5243c3b I don't recall inclement weather on a fair day. john updike
19a0dca Music affected him as women's talking did, when there was no interceding in it. He was an instructor, not a listener. John Updike
450df98 It's the strange thing about you mystics, how often your little ecstasies wear a skirt. John Updike
ebb1302 Do you think God wants a waterfall to be a tree? John Updike
61c87d2 You can go to the dark side of the moon and back and see nothing more wonderful and strange than the way men and women manage to get together. John Updike
30d16f4 be what you are. Don't try to be Sally or Johnny or Fred next door; be yourself. John Updike
66f550a Geography! That's something they teach in the third grade! I never heard of a grownup studying geography. John Updike
b4a8b50 Rabbit realised the world was not solid and benign, it was a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of money. You just passed through, and they milked you for what you were worth, mostly when you were young and gullible. John Updike
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