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"He lost his appetite for reading. He was afraid of being overwhelmed again. In mystery novels people died like dolls being discarded; in science fiction enormities of space and time conspired to crush the humans ; and even in P.G. Wodehouse he felt a hollowness, a turning away from reality that was implicitly bitter, and became explicit in the comic figures of futile parsons."
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Exlpore more Disillusion quotes
"When I was in junior high school, I used to think that Disney's 1990's paranormal television program 'So Weird' was every kid's ideal life - not going to school, living on a tour bus, having rockstar parents, traveling all over North America and never staying in one place for more than a week or so. Of course, eventually the realization hits you that the kids out there who really do live like this, pulling up stakes every week and never staying with their friends or having a permanent residence, aren't really happy."
"I made a sorry face in response to such strong insistence, but I couldn't believe him. Fantasies were exactly that..fantasies. Whimsy. Wishes. Mere castles in the sky without foundation or substance. Dreams didn't come true. To believe so would be to believe falsely, to surrender to madness, to give in to an unreliable hope that would crush me once again as it always, always did!"
"My emotions still held a stubborn hope that humans could be loyal, that they could hold out against the promise of an easy life. But I knew better."
"Did you play by the rules and work hard but feel empty and unfulfilled? It's because you were lied to."
"Dreams are just lies that we tell ourselves while we're asleep."
"Do you think I am standing here, making this up as I go? I am sorry to disillusion you. I am not Robin Williams. I am the king of the pen."
"He's like a hero come back from thewar, a poor maimed bastard living out the reality of his dreams.Wherever he sits himself the chair collapses; whatever door heenters the room is empty: whatever he puts in his mouth leaves abad taste. Everything is just the same as it was before; theelements are unchanged, the dream is no different than the reality.Only, between the time he went to sleep and the time he woke up,his body was stolen."
"But he did not tell her, for he realised how petty it would appear to her, and how different from what she had expected, less sensational and less touching; he was afraid, too, lest, disillusioned in the matter of art, she might at the same time be disillusioned in the greater matter of love."
"So what are we given? We're also given, my generation, the disillusionment of our parents."
"He lost his appetite for reading. He was afraid of being overwhelmed again. In mystery novels people died like dolls being discarded; in science fiction enormities of space and time conspired to crush the humans ; and even in P.G. Wodehouse he felt a hollowness, a turning away from reality that was implicitly bitter, and became explicit in the comic figures of futile parsons."
Explore more quotes by John Updike
"Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience."
"Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner."
"A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens."
"It is easy to love people in memory the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you."
"Women, fire in their crotch, won't burn out, begin by fighting off pricks, end by going wild hunting for one that still works."
"The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks."
"The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all."
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