If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Museums and bookstores should offer freedom for personal exploration and creativity.
In this quote, John Updike articulates the idea that museums and bookstores should be spaces of freedom and self-exploration, akin to vacant lots where individual curiosity and creativity can flourish without external pressures. He suggests that these environments should encourage people to engage with art and literature on their own terms, allowing for a personal and uninhibited experience.
Themes
MuseumsBookstoresCreativityFreedomExploration
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about the importance of creativity in education, I quoted Updike to emphasize the need for free exploration.
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.
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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.
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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.
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To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit.
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Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.
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Similar quotes
You need to keep something for yourself. As a writer, I feel that even more strongly. I feel like I need to be able to freely observe the world. That's the way I like to move through the world; I don't need to be the focus of attention. If I am, it impairs my ability to write and to do what I do.
Tracy ChapmanRead
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I think the moment you start trying to please a fan base is when you start going downhill. I'm going to always, always write about what I want, even if it doesn't necessarily cater to most of them.
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Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.
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The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.
Wallace StevensRead
Realism should only be the means of expression of religious genius... or, at the other extreme, the artistic expressions of monkeys which are quite satisfied with mere imitation. In fact, art is never realistic though sometimes it is tempted to be. To be really realistic a description would have to be endless.
Albert CamusRead