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John Updike

John Updike Quotes

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Famous John Updike Quotes

“In fact we do not try to picture the afterlife, nor is it our selves in our nervous tics and optical flecks that we wish to perpetuate; it is the self as the window on the world that we can't bear to thinkof shutting. My mind when I was a boy of ten or eleven sent up its silent scream at the thought of future aeons -- at the thought of the cosmic party going on without me. The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise of the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.”

WorldTryingMindSelfFactsLightWishPartyBoysBearsTenWindowOppositesPraiseSilentComplexesSelfishNervousWitnessScreamCosmicAfterlifeYearningPrivilegedElevenIntervalsTics
Author:John Updike
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“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.”

TryingBelieveSelfRealityGrowthMemoriesEmotionStepsConscienceAll ThingsAskingIntentionRealmsMaterialismSensationsConsumptionExclusiveGood Faith
Book:Self-consciousness: memoirs
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“Phyllis explained to him, trying to give of her deeper self, 'Don't you find it so beautiful, math? Like an endless sheet of gold chains, each link locked into the one before it, the theorems and functions, one thing making the next inevitable. It's music, hanging there in the middle of space, meaning nothing but itself, and so moving...'”

GivingTryingSelfBeautifulMovingNextSpaceOne ThingMiddleGoldFunctionMathematicsDeeperMathEndlessChainsInevitableLinksLockedSheetsTheoremsMeaning Nothing
Author:John Updike
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