A Quote by John Updike

It seems to me the book has not just aesthetic values - the charming little clothy box of the thing, the smell of the glue, even the print, which has its own beauty. But there's something about the sensation of ink on paper that is in some sense a thing, a phenomenon rather than an epiphenomenon. I can't break the association of electric trash with the computer screen. Words on the screen give the sense of being just another passing electronic wriggle.

John Updike

Quote Topics

About Aesthetic Another Association Beauty Being Book Box Break Charming Computer Computer Screen Electric Electronic Even Give Glue Ink Just Little Me Own Paper Passing Phenomenon Print Rather Screen Seems Sensation Sense Smell Some Something Than Thing Trash Values Which Words

Quote Author

John Updike
American - Novelist
March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009

That's what I love about writing. Once you get the words down on paper, in print, they start to make sense. It's like you don't know what you think until it dribbles from your brain down your arm and into your hand and out through your fingers and shows up on the computer screen, and you read it and realize: That's really true; I believe that.

Ellen Wittlinger

I am very grateful to the electronic world for making my life easier, but there is something about holding a book - the smell and the world of association. Even when e-books are perfected, as they surely will be, it will be like being in bed with a very well-made robot rather than a warm, soft, human being whom you love.

Anne Fadiman

When you look at the whole explosion of the Internet, the decline of print journalism, there are all of these plus-or-minus ramifications, and you have to work it out. The great thing about books is that you have a tactile thing that's there. You can download this or download that, but how long do you want to be staring at a screen for the rest of your life? You've got to have some kind of proper interface for people that's not about the screen.

Irvine Welsh

... when I saw any of those kinds of beauty I knew I was alive, and not just in the sense that when I hit my thumb with a hammer I knew I was alive, but rather in the sense that I was partaking of something--something was passing through me that it was in my nature to be a part of.

Neal Stephenson

God knows, I'm not the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be, But twenty times I rather would be An atheist clean, Than under gospel colours hid be Just for a screen.

Robert Burns

I've never understood the notion that actors and actresses should look great on-screen just because they're on-screen. That doesn't make sense to me.

Kate Winslet

You show people playing poker or hacking into a computer; it feels so significant in the script, and then when you see it on the screen, it loses something. But there's something about cooking - food being prepared is incredibly captivating. It became just a fun box of tools to use as a director.

Jon Favreau

I have always preferred paper and ink to a computer screen and I still write most of my lyrics by hand.

Leo Sayer

In humans, smell is often viewed as an aesthetic sense, as a sense capable of eliciting enduring thoughts and memories. Smell, however, is the primal sense. It is the sense that affords most organisms the ability to detect food, predators, and mates.

Richard Axel

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.

Daniel J. Boorstin

I don't even own a computer. I write by hand then I type it up on an old manual typewriter. But I cross out a lot - I'm not writing in stone tablets, it's just ink on paper. I don't feel comfortable without a pen or a pencil in my hand. I can't think with my fingers on the keyboard. Words are generated for me by gripping the pen, and pressing the point on the paper.

Paul Auster

I knew that I was writing for an American audience and that if I sold foreign rights, they would retranslate the book to make it make sense to that language. But one thing that was really important to me was not to italicize any of the words in the languages that were in the stories, because I feel like those foreign words felt just as important and integral to the story as everything else, so I wanted it all to just exist as its own thing.

Molly Antopol

something can only become an illusion after disillusionment. before that, it is something real. what caused the disillusionment? no one told me the print on the wall was just ink and paper and had no life of its own. at some point the cat stopped blinking, and i stopped thinking it could.

Lynda Barry

I said the screen will kill the reader, and it has: the movie screen in the beginning, the television screen, and now the coup de grace, the computer screen.

Philip Roth

On a piece of paper, write down the thing that is stressing you, the obstacle that is in your way. Then put it in a box and just leave it there. At the end of about a week, dispose of it - throw it in the trash or bury it - some sort of ritualistic act of releasing it.