Frases de John Updike

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“Estamos más vivos cuando estamos enamorados.”

“Las malas hierbas no saben que son malas hierbas.”

“Ese es el problema de preocuparse por alguien, comienza a sentirse sobreprotector. Entonces comienzas a sentirte abarrotado.”

“La cultura brasileña refleja más la africana que la americana. En los EE. UU. tenemos el jazz y casi que sólo eso. No existen personajes como Machado de Assis, un mulato considerado uno de los más grandes escritores del país.”

“Cuatro años de Harvard fueron suficientes. Todavía tengo mucho que aprender, pero se me ha dado la noción liberadora de que ahora puedo enseñarme a mí mismo.”

“El sexo es como el dinero, sólo 'demasiado' es suficiente.”

“Le da la sensación de estar rodeado de libertad, de oxígeno. Tothero es como un remolino de aire, y el edificio en el que se encuentra, las calles del pueblo, no son más que escaleras y pasadizos del espacio. Es tan perfecta y coherente la libertad en que se ha convertido el desorden del mundo gracias al simple estallido de su decisión, que todos los caminos parecen buenos, todos los movimientos serán caricias para su piel, y ni un solo átomo de su felicidad se alteraría si Tothero le dijera que en lugar de ir a una cita con dos chicas iban a reunirse con dos machos cabríos, o que no iban a Brewer sino al Tíbet".”

“Hay una cristalización que continúa en un poema que el joven puede sacar, pero que el hombre de mediana edad no puede.”

“... "Esa enfermedad que tiene hace un trabajo horrible en ti. Tus pulmones se llenan".”

“Eres cínico”

“No sabes lo que no sabes.”

“El uno mismo esencial es inocente, y cuando prueba su propia inocencia sabe que vive para siempre.”

“Su voz es apresurada, para mantenerse al día con su cerebro.”

“Ser capaz de escribir se convierte en una especie de escudo, una forma de esconderse, una forma de transformar demasiado instantáneamente el dolor en miel.”

“El olor a buen consejo siempre hace que Rabbit quiera correr hacia el otro lado.”

“Ahora que tengo sesenta años, veo por qué la idea de la sabiduría de los ancianos ha pasado de la moneda.”

“[eres una mujer en la televisión en la rueda de la fortuna] Ella te enorgullece de ser un mamífero de dos patas.”

“Los automóviles solían tener formas tan elegantes, como los aviones, cuando el combustible era barato, veinticinco centavos por galón.”

“La celebridad es una máscara que se come en la cara.”

“[en el hospital, Janice hablando con el Dr. Olman en presencia de Harry en la sala] "¿Qué le pasa exactamente a su corazón?"”

“When we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside; we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept — the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation.”

“No matter how hard you climb, there are always the rich above you, who got there without effort. Lucky stiffs, holding you down, making you discontent so you buy more of the crap advertised on television.”

“Freedom, that he always thought was outward motion, turns out to be this inward dwindling.”

“An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause.”

“[Judy, 8, is watching TV] He tells Judy, "Better pack it in, sweetie. Another big day tomorrow: we're going to go to the beach and sailing." But his voice comes out listless, and perhaps that is the saddest loss time brings, the lessening of excitement about anything.”

“All men are boys time is trying to outsmart.”

“He didn't have a worry in the world back then. He was in paradise and didn't know it.”

“By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.”

“Any decent kind of world, you wouldn't need all these rules.”

“Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.”

“This airport has been designed with big windows viewing the runways, so if there's a crash everybody can feast upon it with their own eyes. The fireball, the fuselage doing a slow skidding twirl, shedding its wings.”

“The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.”

“…golf appeals to the idiot in us, and the child. … Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.”

“Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.”

“I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent canvas upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken.”

“Figure out where you're going before you go there: he was told that a long time ago.”

“[Harry to Janice, about the financial situation] "…You're in real trouble."
"I know… But you have to have faith. You've taught me that."
"I have?" He is pleasantly surprised, to think that in thirty-three years he has taught her anything. "Faith in what?"”

“All this probing and grappling we must do, out in society: how much easier, Annabelle thinks, it is to stay in rooms you know as well as your own body, having a warm meal and an evening of television, where it's all so comfortably one-way.”

“I mean," he says, "how the hell do you think it feels? Sitting there and having the plane explode?”

“…If you could ever get the poor to vote in this country, you'd have socialism. But people want to think rich. That's the genius of the capitalist system: either you're rich, or you want to be, or you think you ought to be.”

“This is the last night when he is nowhere. Tomorrow, life will find him again.”

“The great thing about the dead, they make space.”

“To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client; still, one must make the best of the case, for the purposes of Providence.”

“It rots a writer’s brain, it cretinises you. You say the same thing again and again, and when you do that happily you’re well on the way to being a cretin. Or a politician.”

“We hope the "real" person behind the words will be revealed as ignominiously as a shapeless snail without its shapely shell.”

“God's country. He could have made it smaller and still made the same point.”

“[Nelson, to Harry] "…I keep feeling hassled."
"That's life, Nelson. Hassle."”

“Who would have thought that the Internet, that's supposed to knit the world into a shining tyranny-proof ball, would be so grubbily adolescent?”

“Well," his father says, "I'll say this for Slick Willie, he's brought the phrase out in the open. When I was young you had to explain to girls what it was. They could hardly believe they were supposed to do it.”