760 Quotes by John Updike

The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance; perversity is the souls very life.

Looking foolish does the spirit good. The need not to look foolish is one of youth's many burdens; as we get older we are exempted from more and more.

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 weep.

Sometimes it seems the whole purpose of pets is to bring death into the house.

New York is of course many cities, and an exile does not return to the one he left.

So, you know, I think any life has in it enough material, enough points of departure, to fuel a writer's career and that we shouldn't worry about what we're not but to try to focus on what we are and what we do know.

I can't bear to finish things, beyond a certain point they get heavy. There's something so dead about a finished painting.

We're past the age of heroes and hero kings... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.

Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller.