Authors:
  1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. J
  4. John Updike
  5. Children

John Updike Quotes about Children

All John Updike Quotes Adultery Adventure Age Art Atheism Atheist Childhood Children quotes Country Creation Critics Design Education Exercise Fame Feelings Giving Golf Heart History Home Humanity Inspirational Learning Life Literature Love Lying Madness Marriage Memories Morning Pain Past Pleasure Quality Reality Religion Running School Soul Sports Time Waiting War Water Writing
Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us.

Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us.

John Updike
Zoos, Children, Mirrors

The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education.

John Updike
Education, Children, Father
John Updike (1963). “The Centaur”, Ballantine Books

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.

John Updike
Children, Dirty, Golf
John Updike (2011). “Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf”, p.148, Random House

The difference between a childhood and a boyhood must be this: our childhood is what we alone have had; our boyhood is what any boy in our environment would have had.

John Updike
Children, Boys, Differences
John Updike (2012). “Assorted Prose”, p.132, Random House

Having children is something we think we ought to do because our parents did it, but when it is over the children are just other members of the human race, rather disappointingly.

John Updike
Children, Thinking, Race

If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.

John Updike
Children, Men, Ice Cream
John Updike (2012). “Assorted Prose”, p.244, Random House

And there was, in those Ipswich years, for me at least, a raw educational component; though I used to score well in academic tests, I seemed to know very little of how the world worked and was truly grateful for instruction, whether it was how to stroke a backhand, mix a martini, use a wallpaper steamer, or do the Twist. My wife, too, seemed willing to learn. Old as we must have looked to our children, we were still taking lessons, in how to be grown-up.

John Updike
Happiness, Children, Educational
John Updike (2012). “Self-Consciousness: Memoirs”, p.55, Random House

The crooked little tomato branches, pulpy and pale as if made of cheap green paper, broke under the weight of so much fruit; there was something frantic in such fertility, a crying-out like that of children frantic to please.

John Updike
Children, Tomatoes, Paper
John Updike (2007). “The Witches of Eastwick”, p.8, Penguin UK

You May Also Like: