760 Quotes by John Updike

You do things and do things and nobody really has a clue.

Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.

My wife and I had children when we were children ourselves.

There's always something new by looking at the same thing over and over.

Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position.

I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent canvas upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken.

I was trying to support a family with writing. I didn't have a private income. I had no other profession.

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 truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness.

Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or more - a day to write. Some very good things have been written on an hour a day.