A Quote by John Updike

I can't bear to finish things, beyond a certain point they get heavy. There's something so dead about a finished painting. — © John Updike
I can't bear to finish things, beyond a certain point they get heavy. There's something so dead about a finished painting.
When something is finished, that means it's dead, doesn't it? I believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting - I just stop working on it for a while.
You know, a song is like a kid. You bring it up. And sometimes something you thought was going to be fantastic, by the time it's finished, is a bit of a disappointment...Beyond a certain point, the music isn't mine anymore. It's yours.
Whatever it takes to finish things, finish. You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished.
When I finish a sentence, after much labor, it's finished. A certain point comes at which you can't do any more work on it because you know it will kill the sentence.
But when I worked on a painting I would do it from a drawing but I would put certain things I was fairly sure I wanted in the painting, and then collage on the painting with printed dots or painted paper or something before I really committed it.
Sometimes I finish a movie, and I get used to a certain lifestyle, and when that stops, I get a bit lost for about a week. 'No one is bringing me lunch anymore - I've got to go do that myself?' I lose the main point of my focus.
There's something helpful about the fast pace of a TV set where everything has to be finished by the end of the week. You have to finish the episode; it doesn't matter how long you have to go on Friday night, but you have to get it done.
I consider my painting finished when my eyes goes to a particular spot on the canvas. But if I put the picture away about thirty feet on the wall and the movements keep returning to me and the eye seems to be responding to something living, then it is finished.
I think the difference between 'Heavy Rain' and 'Beyond' is that 'Heavy Rain' still had a lot of references to films. Especially in the mood, and it was a dark thriller... where, in 'Beyond,' we tried to create something truly original and doesn't refer to anything.
As I see it, you are living with something that you keep hidden deep inside. Something heavy. I felt it from the first time I met you. You have a strong gaze, as if you have made up your mind about something. To tell you the truth, I myself carry such things around inside. Heavy things. That is how I can see it in you.
Miracles are signs, and like all signs, they are never about themselves; they're about whatever they are pointing toward. Miracles point to something beyond themselves. But to what? To God himself. That's the point of miracles - to point us beyond our world to another world.
I don't like finished things, because finished is over, dead.
The burden of Karma is heavy. All alike have heavy debts to pay. Yet none, so the Wisdom teaches, is ever faced with more than he can bear. Whether or not we can grin, we must bear it, and it is folly to attempt to run away.
A painting can't be everything. You have to stop, at some point. It has to be finished, if you want anyone to see it. Some people just continue to work on things, forever. I don't know which is better.
I think we seem to remember things in still pictures. I never gave up on painting. When they said painting was dead, I just thought, Well, that's all about photography, and photography's not that interesting, and it's changing anyway.
Each movie you do about a real person is like a painting, and you choose certain things in the painting that you want to pull out and you want to show.
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