John Updike quotes | Thousands Of Quotes

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But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn.

An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause.

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.