Sad to think that we won’t have any new stories from John Updike, one of the last century’s masters. But so many here in the two volumes of his collected stories, 186 by my count, stories to read, reread, savor over the course of a cold season. Updike’s genius in the short form spills out of these many, many pages.
We reserve the term ‘genius’ for people who are creative, who are innovators, who think in ways that are entirely new. In the Middle Ages, the term ‘genius’ was reserved for people with the best memories. That is telling.
The manager believes soccer is a science and the field a laboratory, but the genius of Einstein and the subtlety of Freud is not enough for the owners and the fans. They want a miracle worker like Our Lady of Lourdes, with the stamina of Gandhi.
All genius is a conquering of chaos and mystery.
Madonna is her own Hollywood studio – a popelike mogul and divine superstar in one. She has a laserlike instinct for publicity, aided by her visual genius for still photography (which none of her legion of imitators has). Unfortunately, her public life has dissolved into a series of staged photo ops.
It’s easy to be a genius in your twenties. In your forties, it’s difficult.
‘E.T.’ depended absolutely on the concept of cinema, and I think that Steven Spielberg, who I’m very fond of, is a genius.
But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched by the same madness and genius.
There’s a certain amount of screwball and genius in ‘Willy Wonka.’
When you work in the United States Senate, and you are around people of all different ideas and beliefs, you realize that what our Founding Fathers did that was so genius, is that they made the Senate the place where compromises are supposed to happen because of the makeup of the Senate.
Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by friction.
I’ve done all the table reads for Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow for all the pirate movies, because he’s just been doing other stuff, and I just love the whole Jack Sparrow thing he’s got going on; it is just genius, and I just think he has so much fun with it.
Genius ain’t anything more than elegant common sense.
A clone of Einstein wouldn’t be stupid, but he wouldn’t necessarily be any genius, either.
God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.
Many now born, by the time they are voters will compose part of a nation with a genius nowhere equaled, and with a vast territory upon which those energies and that genius can operate.
If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.
Iniesta is a true football genius, and we should all give thanks not only for what he has done but what he’s continuing to do.
Berlusconi is a genius in communication. Otherwise, he would never have become so rich.
Nick Hornby’s a genius.
Genius is the talent of a person who is dead.
It is Proust’s implacable honesty, his reluctance to cut corners or to articulate what might have been good enough or credible enough in any other writer that make him the introspective genius he is.
I admire Johann Strauss a lot. I believe he was a genius of his time.
I know it is very hard to rise above the influences of party prejudice. Often, it almost drowns the sentiment of patriotism. Party rancor and party hatred are the last serpents which the genius of patriotism can crush.
I think that my interpretation of Italian was a lot more southern than what my husband cooks. You know, I grew up in Queens and in Brooklyn, and we – really, it’s more southern. It’s Naples and Sicily. It’s heavier. It’s over-spiced. And like most Americans, I thought spaghetti and meatballs was genius.
Mike Patton is a genius… It is definitely the hardest music I’ve ever played.
I sometimes think that life is a circle. See, I cannot get away from genius. At Barca, I had Messi. At Juve, I have Paulo Dybala. Genius follows me everywhere, I swear.
Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.
I’m no genius, but I’m real smart in one area – I picked the right mate.
One of my top 10 favorite movies of all time was ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.’ ‘Team America’ is a work of genius to me.
I’m pretty handy in the kitchen. But my wife’s the real genius.
Homer, Vergil, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Proust – not exactly authors one expects to whiz through or take lightly, but like all works of genius, they are meant to be read out loud and loved.
Post Malone is one of my biggest inspirations. I just love his songs and his writing. He’s a genius. Then person-wise, I’m a huge fan of Zendaya. I love her. I watch her interviews and everything she does all the time because I think she’s just such a crazy good human being.
That’s the great thing about being a teenager. You think you’re a genius.
I think the Reagan people are superb marketers. Their whole approach to polling, to television, to the symbolism and the rest approaches genius.
There are very few things of virtuosity or genius that you can actually witness.
To know one’s self is wisdom, but not to know one’s neighbors is genius.
I’m just drawn to the odd guy, the man who is full of it, the guy who has limited talent but is pretending he’s a genius.
People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.
Thinking you’re a genius is death.
The only folk I can judge are people like Woody Allen who I think is a genius, largely because I think he has beaten the system. He has his own company, and his films are all his own ideas. It’s his direction, and so it comes out the way he imagined it.
Genius of a kind has always been with me; an empty heart that has taken on a certain wooden quality; an excellent, strong woman’s body and a pitiably starved soul.
Buddy Rich is one of a kind; he’s a genius, and that’s all there is to it.
Despite his dodgy politics, Yeats remains an inspiration for his genius and the simple fact that the older he got, the better he wrote.
I am a genius. Then it amused me to keep saying so, but now it does not. I expected to be happy sometime. Now I know I shall never be.
My first husband, John Barry, was a composer. I couldn’t believe that this sophisticated, talented genius chose me and not any of the other girls. I was so flattered, so excited, so in love with him. Of course, my parents were horrified, as he’d been married once and had a daughter with the au pair girl.
No, I will never do another Rainbow album. I’ll never ever do that again. I want no part in doing it; I want no part in doing anything with Ritchie at all. I respect him. He’s a genius. He was a great part of my life, but I don’t need to go through that hell.
It takes application, a fine sense of value, and a powerful community-spirit for a people to have serious leisure, and this has not been the genius of the Americans.
First have being in your mind. Make real in your mind then bring that being into reality. The genius is he who sees what is not yet and causes it to come to be.
The poets’ scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by death.
Passion is the genesis of genius.
I can’t change overnight into a serious literary author. You can’t compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.
The meetings of the legislature at Springfield then first brought together that splendid group of young men of genius whose phenomenal careers and distinguished services have given Illinois fame in the history of the nation.
Almost all the producers I know and dig, like Quincy Jones or Brian Eno, are really musicians first. I’m a composer, an orchestrator, an arranger and a musician first. I know how to write and rewrite songs, and the genius is really in the rewriting.
Lars Von Trier is a genius. Every film he makes is so honest and powerful.
Genius… is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.
Shakespeare was very political, but he was also a fabulous entertainer. That’s where his genius comes in as a playwright.
I have so many funny friends that I hang out and do bits with, and the fact that we can hire each other is amazing. I asked all of them to help make ‘Kroll Show’ the best that it can be. I’m selfishly trying to use their funny genius for my own benefit.
I’ve always been sensible with my money. I can’t say I’m a business genius.
Genius is the talent for seeing things straight.
The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.
The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.
