760 Quotes by John Updike

Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed.

We don't really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting a certain set of intelligible skills.

You always find things you didn't know you were going to say, and that is the adventure...

A photograph offers us a glimpse into the abyss of time.

Atrocity is truly emperor; All things that thrive are slaves of cruel Creation.

Writers take words seriously-perhaps the last professional class that does-and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors and careless typesetters and obtuse and malevolent reviewers into the lap of the ideal reader.

What we need is progress with an escape hatch.

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

How sad, how strange, we make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation.