760 Quotes by John Updike

The muttered hint, "Remember, you have a stroke here," freezes my joints like a blast from Siberia.

Journalism has not only its social stimulations but its aesthetic virtues. An invitation into print, from however suspect a source, is an opportunity to make something beautiful, to discover within oneself a treasure that would otherwise have remained buried.

The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it.

Writers take words seriously-perha ps 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.

Living is a compromise, between doing what you want and doing what other people want.

A cynic is a kind of romantic who has aged.

Doctorow here appears not so much a re-constructor of history as a visionary who seeks in time past occasions for poetry.

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.