If my mother hadn't been trying to be a writer, I don't know if I would have thought of it myself. — John Updike Copy Share Image
The literary scene is a kind of Medusa’s raft, small and sinking, and one’s instinct when a newcomer tries to clamber aboard… — John Updike Copy Share Image
Hemingway describes literary New York as a bottle full of tapeworms trying to feed on each other. — John Updike Copy Share Image
The golf swing is like a suitcase into which we are trying to pack one too many things. — John Updike Copy Share Image
I was trying to support a family with writing. I didn't have a private income. I had no other profession. — John Updike Copy Share Image
I'm trying to get the terrorist out of the bugaboo category and into the category of a fellow human being. — John Updike Copy Share Image
Christianity isn't looking for a rainbow. If it were... we'd pass out opium at services. We're trying to serve God, not be… — John Updike Copy Share Image
When we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves… — John Updike Copy Share Image
Not judginess, but openness and curiosity are our proper business. I'm still trying to educate myself. I don't think you need to… — John Updike Copy Share Image
I will try not to panic, to keep my standard of living modest and to work steadily, even shyly, in the spirit… — John Updike Copy Share Image
My attempt has been really to, beyond making a record of contemporary life, which is what you inevitably do, is trying to… — John Updike Copy Share Image
Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or… — John Updike Copy Share Image
Phyllis explained to him, trying to give of her deeper self, 'Don't you find it so beautiful, math? Like an endless sheet… — John Updike Copy Share Image
So, you know, I think any life has in it enough material, enough points of departure, to fuel a writer's career and… — John Updike Copy Share Image
You imagine a reader and try to keep the reader interested. That's storytelling. You also hope to reward the reader with a… — John Updike Copy Share Image
I complain a lot. That's one way of coping. But I'm in a profession where nobody tells you to quit. No board… — John Updike Copy Share Image
In fact we do not try to picture the afterlife, nor is it our selves in our nervous tics and optical flecks… — John Updike Copy Share Image
From the standpoint of a Middle Eastern citizen, Americans look like a bully forcing our way of life on the Islamic way… — John Updike Copy Share Image
The educational aspect of art shows has become overbearing: some of exhibits can leave you bleary from trying to read the walls.… — John Updike Copy Share Image
Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us. — John Updike Copy Share
I assume my stance, and take back the club, low, slowly; at the top, my eyes fog over, and my joints dip and swirl… — John Updike Copy Share
The New England spirit does not seek solutions in a crowd; raw light and solitariness are less dreaded than welcomed as enhancers of our… — John Updike Copy Share
Families, doing everything for each other out of imagined obligation and always getting in each other's way, what a tangle. — John Updike Copy Share
“The mind cannot fall asleep as long as it watches itself. Only when the mind moves unwatched and becomes absorbed in images that tug… — John Updike Copy Share
In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications… — John Updike Copy Share
“Her hair had been going gray as long as he could remember; she bundled it behind in a bun held with hairpins that he… — John Updike Copy Share
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 Copy Share
“Some people find fall depressing, others hate spring. I've always been a spring person myself. All that growth, you can feel Nature groaning, the… — John Updike Copy Share
