“He showed the world what can be done against the odds, against a superpower. He showed -- and this is where Vietnam and Iraq come in, that in a war between an imperialist occupier and the people who actually live there, the people will eventually prevail. They know the terrain. They have more at stake. They have nowhere else to go.”
― John Updike, quote from Terrorist
“Die christliche Sitte, träge aufrecht dazusitzen wie bei einer Unterhaltungsveranstaltung, deutet darauf hin, dass Gott als Unterhaltungskünstler gilt, der von der Bühne entfernt und durch eine andere Nummer ersetzt werden kann, wenn er nicht mehr unterhält.”
― John Updike, quote from Terrorist
“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 lässt, dann liegen sie den ganzen Tag im Zwinger und pennen. Im Grund besteht das Problem darin, dass die Gesellschaft anständig zu sein versucht, und mit Anstand ist gegen die menschliche Natur nichts auszurichten. Nicht das Geringste. Wir sollten alle wieder Jäger und Sammler werden, dann hätten wir eine hundertprozentige Beschäftigungsquote und ein gesundes Magenknurren.”
― John Updike, quote from Terrorist
“Also ist mein Sohn ein Simpel.'
In einer Hinsicht. Aber der größte 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 vögeln, Babys zu kriegen und zu sterben.”
― John Updike, quote from Terrorist
“Wir wissen eben nicht, was einer tun sollte, wir haben nicht mehr wir früher Antworten parat; wir wursteln uns bloß weiter durch und versuchen, nicht nachzudenken.”
― John Updike, quote from Terrorist
John Updike
Born place: in Shillington, Pennsylvania, The United States
Born date March 18, 1932
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“He looks at me fondly. I know that the look doesn’t have love in it. Or even lust. I still wonder about love or sex or lust. I saw lust in his eyes when he looked at that girl on the sidewalk … I love him, anyway. I love him because he’s kind to me and he doesn’t want my body, doesn’t want to feel me or touch me, like all the others … and maybe after a while he might look at me with more than fondness, will kiss me sweetly, tenderly.”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Tenderness
“She has spent most of the day reading and is feeling rather out of touch with reality, as if her own life has become insubstantial in the face of the fiction she's been absorbed in.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from After You'd Gone
“What she loved most about America, Eilis thought on these mornings, was how the heating was kept on all night.”
― Colm Tóibín, quote from Brooklyn
“I had to ask Scottie what TYVM meant, because now that I’ve narrowed into her activities, I notice she is constantly text-messaging her friends, or at least I hope it’s her friends and not some perv in a bathrobe.
“Thank you very much,” Scottie said, and for some reason, the fact that I didn’t get this made me feel completely besieged. It’s crazy how much fathers are supposed to know these days. I come from the school of thought where a dad’s absence is something to be counted on. Now I see all the men with camouflage diaper bags and babies hanging from their chests like little ship figureheads. When I was a young dad, I remember the girls sort of bothered me as babies, the way everyone raced around to accommodate them. The sight of Alex in her stroller would irritate me at times—she’d hang one of her toddler legs over the rim of the safety bar and slouch down in the seat. Joanie would bring her something and she’d shake her head, then Joanie would try again and again until an offering happened to work and Alex would snatch it from her hands. I’d look at Alex, finally complacent with her snack, convinced there was a grown person in there, fooling us all. Scottie would just point to things and grunt or scream. It felt like I was living with royalty. I told Joanie I’d wait until they were older to really get into them, and they grew and grew behind my back.”
― Kaui Hart Hemmings, quote from The Descendants
“He winced when he stood--lumbago, he explained, from turning one too many sentences arounder that day--and said that he still his evening's reading. He did not do justice to a writer unless he read him on consecutive days and for no less than three hours at a sitting. Otherwise, despite his note taking and underlining, he lost touch with a book's inner life and might as well not have begun. Sometimes, when he unavoidably had to miss a day, he would go back and begin all over again, rather than be nagged by his sense that he was wronginger a serious author.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Ghost Writer
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Lord of the White He...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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