All John Updike Quotes
- I still want to give my public, such as it is, a book a year. Book
- I suppose sequels are inevitable for a writer of a certain age. Age
- To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you… Appetites
- I never really made a choice to live in America, so I should be aware of the social strata outside of the ones that I… America
- My interest generally is the hidden Americans; the ones who live far away from the headlines. American
- A person believes various things at various times, even on the same day. Believes
- In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must… Anna
- I find in my own writing that only fiction - and rarely, a poem - fully tests me to the kind of limits of what… Feel
- To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit. Ensures
- The writers we tend to universally admire, like Beckett, or Kafka, or TS Eliot, are not very prolific. Admire
- In art, anything goes, and if it goes, it goes. Anything Goes
- Writing makes you more human. Human
- The writer must face the fact that ordinary lives are what most people live most of the time, and that the novel as a narration… Adventurous
- We are drawn to artists who tell us that art is difficult to do and takes a spiritual effort, because we are still puritan enough… Art
- Humor is my default mode. Default
- Toni Morrison has a habit, perhaps traceable to the pernicious influence of William Faulkner, of plunging into the narrative before the reader has a clue… Clue
- My wife and I had children when we were children ourselves. Children
- The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me. Ink
- I would write ads for deodorants or labels for catsup bottles if I had to. Ads
- I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of… Believe
- In any interview, you do say more or less than you mean. Any
- My life is, in a sense, trash. My life is only that of which the residue is my writing. Life
- Perhaps I have written fiction because everything unambiguously expressed seems somehow crass to me; and when the subject is myself, I want to jeer and… Crass
- Harvard has enough panegyrists without me. Harvard
- My first ambition was to be an animator for Walt Disney. Then I wanted to be a magazine cartoonist. Ambition