Quotes from John Updike

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

Reminiscence and self-parody are part of remaining true to oneself.

In leaving New York in 1957, I did leave without regret the literary demimonde of agents and would-be's and with-it nonparticipants; this world seemed unnutritious and interfering.

I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'

Old age treats freelance writers pretty gently.

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

Billy Collins writes lovely poems. Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides.

Imagine writing a poem with a sweating, worried-looking boy handing you a different pencil at the end of every word. My golf, you may say, is no poem; nevertheless, I keep wanting it to be one.

Russia is the only country of the world you can be homesick for while you're still in it.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

There is no such thing as static happiness. Happiness is a mixed thing, a thing compounded of sacrifices, and losses, and betrayals.

In the vacuum of the heart love falls forever.

Bookstores are lonely forts, spilling light onto the sidewalk. They civilize their neighborhoods.

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

There's something very reassuring... about the written record.

When I was born, my parents and my mother's parents planted a dogwood tree in the side yard of the large white house in which we lived throughout my boyhood. This tree I learned quite early, was exactly my age - was, in a sense, me.

Truth should not be forced; it should simply manifest itself, like a woman who has in her privacy reflected and coolly decided to bestow herself upon a certain man.

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.

We don't really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting a certain set of intelligible skills.

Baseball skills schizophrenically encompass a pitcher's, a batter's and a fielder's.

Love makes the air light.

One of the nice things about having a lover, it makes you think about everything anew. The rest of your life becomes a kind of movie, flat and even rather funny.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.