760 Quotes by John Updike

A house, having been willfully purchased and furnished, tells us more than a body, and its description is a foremost resource of the art of fiction.

I will try not to panic, to keep my standard of living modest and to work steadily, even shyly, in the spirit of those medieval carvers who so fondly sculpted the undersides of choir seats.

There's almost nothing worse to live with than a struggling artist.

Musicians are very mysterious and wonderful people to me; I don't know how they do it.

Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath.

For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do, they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.

It's been the same story ever since I can remember, ever since Wilson - the Republicans don't do a thing for the little man.

There is this quality in things, of the Right was seeming Wrong at first. To test our faith

I think people do look to writers to tell the truth in a way that nobody else quite will, not politicians or ministers or sociologists. A writer's job, is to, by way of fiction, somehow describe the way we live. And to me, this seems an important task, very worth doing, and I think also, to the reading public, it seems, even though they might not articulate it, it seems to them something worth doing also.