760 Quotes by John Updike

Cities aren’t like people; they live on and on, even though their reason for being where they are has gone downriver and out to sea.

In memory’s telephoto lens, far objects are magnified.

A writer’s self-consciousness, for which he is much scorned, is really a mode of interestedness, that inevitably turns outward.

The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun’s just started.

Funny, the world just can’t touch you once you follow your instincts.

The worst thing in the world is a bitter woman. That’s one thing about your mother, she’s never been bitter.

I think it’s the sentence-to-sentence pleasures, the little surprises of a surprising style of an acute style, and also the way things happen one after the other, that makes a book interesting to read page to page.

Being a famous writer is a little like being a tall dwarf. You’re on the edge of normality.

The – writing is a kind of act of aggression, and a person who is not aggressive in his normal, may I say, intercourse with humanity might well be an aggressive writer.