Author

From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

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.

From John Updike

There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes.

From John Updike

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.

From John Updike

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

From John Updike

I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness.

From John Updike