760 Quotes by John Updike

Hemingway describes literary New York as a bottle full of tapeworms trying to feed on each other.

I'm not against TV; I don't go on the morning talk shows because I'm not invited. If I was, I might go.

Most writers begin with accounts of their first home, their family, and the town, often from quite a hostile point of view-love/hate, let's say. In a way, this stepping outside, in an attempt to judge enough to create a duplicate of it, makes you an outsider. . . . I think it's healthy for a writer to feel like an outsider. If you feel like an insider you get committed to a partisan view, you begin to defend interests, so you wind up not really empathizing with all mankind.

Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.

I secretly understood: the primitive appeal of the hearth. Television is-its irresistible charm-a fire.

As souls must cry when they awaken in tiny babies and find themselves far from heaven

A photograph presents itself not only as a visual representation, but as evidence, more convincing than a painting because of the unimpeachable mechanical means whereby it was made. We do not trust the artist's flattering hand; but we do trust film, and shadows, and light.

I see no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic-strip novel masterpiece.

The lust to meet authors ranks low, I think, on the roll of holy appetites; but it is an authentic pang.