A Quote by John Updike

Whatever art offered the men and women of previous eras, what it offers our own, it seems to me, is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. The town I grew up in had many vacant lots; when I go back now, the vacant lots are gone. They were a luxury, just as tigers and rhinoceri, in the crowded world that is making, are luxuries. Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.

John Updike

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Art Back Bookstores Breathing Certain Crowded Demands Eras Exercise Feel Find Go Gone Grew Grew Up Had Just Like Lots Luxuries Luxury Making Many Me Men Men And Women Museums Now Offered Offers Our Own Places Play Previous Room Seems Should Space Spirit Think Tigers Town Up Us Vacant Were Whatever Women World

Quote Author

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

Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.

John Updike

When I came to Detroit, if you threw a stone up in the air it would hit an autoworker on its way down. A few years after that, if you threw a stone in the air it'd hit an abandoned house or a vacant lot on its way down. And most people saw those vacant lots as blight. But meanwhile during World War II, blacks had moved from the South to the North. And they saw these vacant lots as places where you could grow food for the community. And so urban agriculture was born.

Grace Lee Boggs

I remember New York in the '80s as a place with vacant lots that would eventually give over to nature. Weeds would grow up, squirrels would move in. That entropy is gone now. It's too expensive to let a vacant lot go natural.

Moby

When I grew up, we played in vacant lots.

Archie Manning

There are no vacant lots in nature.

Edward Abbey

In a wild and diverse democracy each of us should be trying to talk to lots and lots and lots of people outside of our own kind of comfort zone and community, and that injunction goes even further for political leaders. They should talk to everyone, they should listen to everyone, and at the end of the day they should have a mind of their own.

Bill Ayers

The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money.

Jimmy Breslin

The land created me. I'm wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I'm more at home in the vacant lots.

Bob Dylan

Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.

Ayn Rand

FLAG, n. A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees and vacant lots in London

Ambrose Bierce

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

John Updike

When I left the work world, I started designing my dream house. I dived into architecture and bought seven vacant lots. My plan was to build one house, move in, and build the next. If the next was better, I'd move in and sell the previous one - so on and so forth.

Tom Anderson

The past, the future, majesty, love - if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

Walt Whitman

If in a city we had six vacant lots available to the youngsters of a certain neighborhood for playing ball, it might be "development" to build houses on the first, and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and even the fifth, but when we build houses on the last one, we forget what houses are for.

Aldo Leopold

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant

T. S. Eliot

Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness. Everything has to be filled in, it seems-appointment books, hillsides, vacant lots-but when all the spaces are filled, the Loneliness really begins. Then the Groups are joined, the Classes are signed up for, and the Gift-to-Yourself items are bought. When the Loneliness starts creeping in the door, the Television Set is turned on to make it go away. But it doesn't go away. So some of us do instead, and after discarding the emptiness of the Big Congested Mess, we discover the fullness of Nothing.

Benjamin Hoff

A Quote by John Updike

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