If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
John UpdikeRead
My life is, in a sense, trash. My life is only that of which the residue is my writing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a deep personal sentiment about the value of writing in one's life, suggesting that everything else feels insignificant compared to the act of creating.
John Updike expresses a profound sense of dissatisfaction with his life, describing it as 'trash,' yet he finds meaning and worth in his writing. This statement illustrates how the creative process serves as a vital aspect of his identity, transforming the mundane aspects of existence into something valuable through the act of writing.
Themes
WritingLifeValueIdentityCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
During a writing workshop, when discussing the purpose of creativity.
More from John Updike
All quotes βDost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. _x000D_ _x000D_ Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
John UpdikeRead
Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.
John UpdikeRead
But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.
John UpdikeRead
The reader knows the writer better than he knows himself; but the writer's physical presence is light from a star that has moved on.
John UpdikeRead
To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit.
John UpdikeRead
Similar quotes
Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter -- to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water.
Albert SchweitzerRead
A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it?
Charles IvesRead
I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections, Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling, Or just after.
Wallace StevensRead
Being an actor means asking people to look at you. I guess I accept that. But it's a profession in which the job is to show another world and other people. You may access it through bits of yourself, and your imagination and experience, but actually, in the end, you're not playing yourself.
Ralph FiennesRead
I love having my hands in the dirt. It is never a science and always an art. There are no rules. And if it comes down to me versus that weed I'm trying to pull out of the ground that doesn't want to come out? I know I'll win.
Matthew McconaugheyRead
Only photography has been able to divide human life _x000D_ into a series of moments, each of them has the value of a complete existence.
Eadweard MuybridgeRead