John Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. with an honour that only two other authors can claim. Best known for his Rabbit series which follows the adult life of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom he is one of only three authors who have won the Pulitzer prize more than once.
To honour this achievement we have collected together 10 quotes for you to enjoy.
“It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.”
“Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.”
“Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.”
“I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody’s head.”
“Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.”
“Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us.”
“What is the past, after all, but a vast sheet of darkness in which a few moments, pricked apparently at random, shine?”
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“I like old men. They can be wonderful bastards because they have nothing to lose. The only people who can be themselves are babies and old bastards.”
“Women, fire in their crotch, won’t burn out, begin by fighting off pricks, end by going wild hunting for one that still works”
“Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.”
With quotes like those and the fact that Updike wrote The Witches of Eastwick, which I hadn’t realised, I can understand why he has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction more than once.
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