John Updike

"All that lives must die. To waste this life in fretful care for the next, or for a future calamity - that, too, is a sin. Birth lays upon us the natural commandment to love each day and what it brings."

- 'Gertrude and Claudius' by John Updike

John Updike

"Without love, we die, or at best live stunted."

- 'Gertrude and Claudius' by John Updike

John Updike

"Our names are used for convenience by others but figure marginally in our own minds, which know ourselves as an entity too vast and vague to name."

- "Gertrude and Claudius" by John Updike

John Updike

"But how could any world be more glorious than this one? Its defining light, its countless objects and perspectives, its noises of life, of motion."

- "Gertrude and Claudius" by John Updike

John Updike

"'How can we not protest?' Horwendil said to her, impulsive in turn. 'Sent from the abode of angels to live on this earth among beasts and filth, and sentenced to death in a misery of foreknowing!'"

- "Gertrude and Claudius" by John Updike