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"While some of us burned on the edges of life, insatiable and straining to see more deeply in, he sat complacently at the centre and let life come to him - so much of it, evidently, that he could not keep track of his appointments."
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"Huh," Leo said. "Well, if you ever get off this island and want a job, let me know. You're not a total klutz."She smirked. "A job, eh?" Making things in your forge?""Nah, we could start our own shop," Leo said, surprising himself. Starting a machine shop had always been one of his dreams, but he'd never told anyone about it. "Leo and Calypso's Garage: Auto Repair and Mechanical Monsters."

"There is nothing wrong with wanting more. There is no reason why you should n't get everything you want from life."

"To wait at Monte Cristo for the purpose of watching like a dragon over the almost incalculable richs that had thus fallen into his possession satisfied not the cravings of his heart, which yearned to return to dwell among mankind, and to assume the rank, power, and influence which are always accorded to wealth - that first and greatest of all the forces within the grasp of man."

"In order to have success, you have to concentrate on your goals."

"It is never late, pursuit your ambitions."

"The life you wish you had will come by working like you never have."

"Life is full of limitless opportunities. You ought to seek them."

"An ambitious amateur will rise above a complacent master."
Explore more quotes by John Updike

"The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it."

"Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went."

"The Englishman is under no constitutional obligation to believe that all men are created equal. The American agony is therefore scarcely intelligible like a saint's self-flagellation viewed by an atheist."

"An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause."

"Wickedness was like food: once you got started it was hard to stop, the gut expanded to take in more and more."

"A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world."

"Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey."

"Truth should not be forced; it should simply manifest itself, like a woman who has in her privacy reflected and coolly decided to bestow herself upon a certain man."

"A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience."
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