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John Updike Quotes about War

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Man makes one journey all his living days, Down through the realms of music and of art; Down through the halls of fame and glorious praise; Down through the tears and triumphs of the heart To some sweet woman waiting

Man makes one journey all his living days, Down through the realms of music and of art; Down through the halls of fame and glorious praise; Down through the tears and triumphs of the heart To some sweet woman waiting some place there. For her he builds his cities and makes war, Seeks gold and glorious wealth to store.

John Updike
Sweet, Art, War

Within your own generation-the same songs, the same wars, the same attitudes toward those wars, the same rules and radio shows in the air-you can gauge the possibilities and impossibilities. With a person of another generation, you are treading water, playing with fire.

John Updike
Song, Attitude, War
John Updike (2010). “Rabbit at Rest”, p.462, Random House

To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.

John Updike
Funny, Sex, War
Self-Consciousness ch. 4 (1989)

In asking forgiveness of women for our mythologizing of their bodies, for being unreal about them, we can only appeal to their own sexuality, which is different but not basically different, perhaps, from our own. For women, too, there seems to be that tangle of supplication and possessiveness, that descent toward infantile undifferentiation, that omnipotent helplessness, that merger with the cosmic mother-warmth, that flushed pulse-quickened leap into overestimation, projection, general mix-up.

John Updike
Mother, War, Pulse
John Updike (1991). “Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism”, Alfred A. Knopf

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