760 Quotes by John Updike

When we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside; we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept - the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation.

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

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

Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.

For many years, I read mystery novels for relaxation. But my tastes were too narrow - and, having read all of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, I discovered that the implausibility and the thinness of the people distracted me unduly from the plot.

Students present themselves...like a succession of CDs whose shimmering surface gives no clue to their contents without the equipment to play them.

Reagan has turned America into a tax haven.

The moment when the finished book or, better yet, a tightly packed carton of finished books arrives on my doorstep is the moment of truth, of culmination; its bliss lasts as much as five minutes, until the first typographical error or production flaw is noticed.

Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.