Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone. -John Updike Alone
Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper. -John Updike Morning
Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed. -John Updike Hope
The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. -John Updike Wisdom
Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went. -John Updike Home
The study of literature threatens to become a kind of paleontology of failure, and criticism a supercilious psychoanalysis of authors. -John Updike Failure
Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life. -John Updike Nature
Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five. -John Updike Sports
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. -John Updike Poetry
Mars has long exerted a pull on the human imagination. The erratically moving red star in the sky was seen as sinister or violent by the ancients: The Greeks identified it with Ares, the god of war; the Babylonians named it after Nergal, god of the underworld. To the ancient Chinese, it was Ying-huo, the fire planet. -John Updike Imagination
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. -John Updike Leadership
To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit. -John Updike Happiness
I know more about what it's like to be elderly and infirm and kind of stupid, the way you get forgetful, but on the other hand I'm a littler, wiser, dare we say? The word 'wisdom' has kind of faded out of our vocabulary, but yeah, I'm a little wiser. -John Updike Wisdom
Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency. -John Updike Wisdom
In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity. -John Updike Sympathy
Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner. -John Updike Teacher
The cinema has done more for my spiritual life than the church. My ideas of fame, success and beauty all originate from the big screen. Whereas Christian religion is retreating everywhere and losing more and more influence; film has filled the vacuum and supports us with myths and action-controlling images. -John Updike Religion
I must say, when I reread myself, it's the poetry I tend to look at. It's the most exciting to write, and it's over the quickest. -John Updike Poetry
