760 Quotes by John Updike

The theme of old age doesn't seem to fascinate Hollywood.

The city overwhelmed our expectations. The Kiplingesque grandeur of Waterloo Station, the Eliotic despondency of the brick row in Chelsea the Dickensian nightmare of fog and sweating pavement and besmirched cornices.

You can never get the smell of smoke out. Like the smell of failure in life.

We were all brought up to want things and maybe the world isn't big enough for all that wanting. I don't know. I don't know anything

It's sort of good to see your vocation as a daily task and have fairly modest expectations for financial or reward in other coin - glory, love, whatever.

The writers we tend to universally admire, like Beckett, or Kafka, or TS Eliot, are not very prolific.

It's so hard to make a good tee shot after a birdie.

President George] Bush talked to us like we were a bunch of morons and we ate it up. Can you imagine, the Pledge of Allegiance, read my lips-can you imagine such crap in this day and age?

The first author I met socially was Joyce Cary.