Author: John Updike

Cites

• Ralph Waldo Emerson (1)
  • IN: Self-Consciousness (1989) Memoir, American
    EPIGRAPH: We are persuaded that a thread runs through all things: All worlds are strung on it, as beads: and men,and events, and life,come to us, only because of that thread
    FROM: Montaigne; or, The Skeptic, (1841), Novel, US
• Epitaph (1)
  • IN: Self-Consciousness (1989) Memoir, American
    EPIGRAPH: Gratia Dei sum quod sum
    FROM: epitaph of Bishop West of Ely, in Ely Cathedral, (None), Epitaph, UK
• Saul Bellow (1)
  • IN: Self-Consciousness (1989) Memoir, American
    EPIGRAPH: Of all that might be omitted in thinking, the worst was to omit your being
    FROM: What Kind of Day Did you Have, (1984), Novel, US
• Virginia Woolf (1)
  • IN: Self-Consciousness (1989) Memoir, American
    EPIGRAPH: I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else.
    FROM: A Room of One's Own, (1929), Novel, UK
• Blaise Pascal (1)
  • IN: Rabbit, Run (1960) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The motions of Grace, the hardness of the heart; external circumstances.
    FROM: Pensee 507, (1670), NULL, France
• Bible (3)
  • IN: Terrorist (2006) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. And the Lord said, "Is it right for you to be angry?"
    FROM: Bible, Jonah 4:3-4, (-165), Bible, NULL
  • IN: The Poorhouse Fair (1958) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: If they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when the wood is dry?
    FROM: Luke 23:31 EV Rieu translation, (100), Bible, NULL
  • IN: Roger's Version (1986) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: To what purpose is this waste?
    FROM: Matthew 16:8, (100), Bible, NULL
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1)
  • IN: Terrorist (2006) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Disbelief is more resistant than faith because it is sustained by the senses.
    FROM: Of Love and Other Demons, (1994), Novel, Columbia
• Sartre (1)
  • IN: Of the Farm (1965) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Consequently, when, in all honesty, I've recognized that man is a being in whom existence precedes essence, that he is a free being who, in various circumstances, can only want his freedom, I have at the same time recognized that I can want only the freedom of others.
    FROM: Existentialism is a Humanism, (1945), Lecture, France
• Wallace Stevens (2)
  • IN: Bech at Bay (1998) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Something of the unreal is necessary to fecundate the real.
    FROM: preface to William Carlos William's Collected Poems, (1934), Book, US
  • IN: Rabbit Is Rich (1981) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The difficulty to think at the end of day, When the shapeless shadow covers the sun And nothing is left except light on your fur...
    FROM: "A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts", (1942), Poem, US
• Ferdinand-Camille & Berthelot, Marcellin Dreyfus (1)
  • IN: Bech is Back (1978) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Becque (Henry) ... Apres des debuts poetiques assez obscurs... a travers des inexperiences et des brutalites voules, un talent original et vigoureux. Toutefois, l'auteur ne reparut que beaucoup plus tard avec [auvres nombreuses], ou la critique signala les memes defauts et la meme puissance... M. Becque a ete decore de la Legion d'honneur en 1887.
    FROM: La Grande Encyclopedia, (1886), Book, France
• NULL (1)
  • IN: Rabbit Redux (1971) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Lieut. Col. Vladimir A. Shatalov: I am heading straight for the socket. Lieut. Col. Boris V. Volynov, Soyuz 5 Commander: Easy, not so rough. Colenel Shatalov: It took me a while to find you, but now I've got you.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, NULL
• Matthew Arnold (1)
  • IN: Villages (2004) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain...
    FROM: "Dover Beach", (1867), Poem, UK
• John Updike (1)
  • IN: Rabbit At Rest (1990) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Rabbit basks above that old remembered world, rich, at rest.
    FROM: Rabbit Is Rich, (1981), Novel, US
• Frederick Douglass (1)
  • IN: Rabbit At Rest (1990) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Food to the indolent is poison, not sustenance.
    FROM: Life and Times of Frederick Douglas, (1881), Book, US
• Sinclair Lewis (1)
  • IN: Rabbit Is Rich (1981) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: At night he lights up a good cigar, and climbs into the little old bus, and maybe causes the carburetor, and shoots out home. He mows the lawn, or sneaks in some practice putting, and then he's ready for dinner.
    FROM: George Babbit, of the Ideal Citizen, (1922), Novel, US
• Søren Kierkegaard (1)
  • IN: Roger's Version (1986) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: O infinite majesty, even if you were not love, even if you were cold in your infinite majesty I could not cease to love you, I need something majestic to love.
    FROM: Journals XP 154, (None), Book, Denmark
• Karl Barth (2)
  • IN: Roger's Version (1986) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: What if the result of the new hymn to the majesty of God should be a new confirmation of the hopelessness of all human activity?
    FROM: "The Humanity of God", (1956), Book, Switzerland
  • IN: The Centaur (1962) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Heaven is the creation inconceivable to man, earth the creation conceivable to him. He himself is the creature on the boundary between heaven and earth.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, Switzerland
• Janet Miller (1)
  • IN: Roger's Version (1986) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: god the wind as windless as the world behind a computer screen
    FROM: "High Holy Days", (None), Poem, US
• Koran (1)
  • IN: The Coup (1978) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Does there not pass over man a space of time when his life is a blank?
    FROM: The Koran, sura 76, (632), Religious Text, NULL
• William Shakespeare (1)
  • IN: The Widows of Eastwick (2008) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: And then (they say) no Spirit can walke abroad, The nights are wholsome, then no Planets strike, No Fairey talkes, nor Witch hath power to Charme: So hallow'd, and so gracious in the time.
    FROM: Hamlet, Act I, Scene I, (1603), Play, UK
• Isobel Gowdie (1)
  • IN: The Witches of Eastwick (1984) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: He was a meikle blak roch man, werie cold.
    FROM: NULL, (1662), NULL, UK
• Agnes Sampson (1)
  • IN: The Witches of Eastwick (1984) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Now efter that the deuell bad endit his admonitions, be cam down out of the culpit, and caused all the company to com and kiss his ers, quhilk they said was cauld lyk yce; his body was hard lyk yrn, as they thocht that handled him.
    FROM: NULL, (1590), NULL, UK
• Josephine Preston Peabody (1)
  • IN: The Centaur (1962) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: But it was still needful that a life should be given to espiate that ancient sin, -- the theft of fire. It happened that Chiron, noblest of all the Centaurs (who are half horses and half men), was wandering the world in agony from a wound that the had received by strange michance. For, at a certain wedding-feast among the Lapithæ of Thessaly, one of the turbulent Centaurs had attempted to steal away the bride. A fierce struggle followed, and in the general confusion, Chiron, blameless as he was, had been wounded by a poisoned arrow. Ever tormented with the hurt and never to be healed, the immortal Centaur longed for death, and begged that he might be accepted as an atonement for Prometheus. The gods heard his prayer and took away his pain and his immortality. He died like my wearied man, and Zeus set him as a shining archer among the stars.
    FROM: Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew, (1897), Book, US

Cited by

• Julian Gough (2)
  • IN: Juno and Juliet (2001) Fiction, Irish
    EPIGRAPH: "I like to teach," Angela said. "It's easier than learning."
    FROM: Couples, (1968), Novel, US
  • IN: Juno & Juliet (2001) Fiction, Irish
    EPIGRAPH: "I like to teach," Angela said. "It's easier than learning."
    FROM: Couples, (1968), Novel, US
• John Niven (1)
  • IN: The Amateur (2009) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Here, in Scotland, golf was not an accessory to life, drawing upon one's marginal energy; it was life, played out of the centre of one's being.
    FROM: Farrell's Caddie, (1991), Short story, US
• Justin Cronin (1)
  • IN: Mary and O’Neil (2001) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Nobody sees it happen, but it does. For suddenly, it seems, the woods are bare.
    FROM: Leaf Season, (1986), Poem, US
• J. Robert Lennon (1)
  • IN: Mailman (2003) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: He goes off whistling, loving the weather. Photons beat on his broad chest, neutrinos penetrate black leather and swamp his toenails. There is a secret to life, but he hasn't delievered it yet.
    FROM: The Mailman (Hugging the Shore), (1983), Book, US
• Louise Fennell (1)
  • IN: Dead Rich (2013) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.
    FROM: Self-Consciousness: Memoirs, (1989), Book, US
• Ian McEwan (1)
  • IN: Solar (2010) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: It gives him great pleasure, makes Rabbit feel rich, to contemplate the world's wasting, to know the earth is mortal too.
    FROM: Rabbit is Rich, (1981), Novel, US
• John Updike (1)
  • IN: Rabbit At Rest (1990) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Rabbit basks above that old remembered world, rich, at rest.
    FROM: Rabbit Is Rich, (1981), Novel, US