John Updike Quotes

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John Updike

Profession : Novelist

Birth : March 18, 1932

In my first 15 or 20 years of authorship, I was almost never asked to give a speech or an interview. The written work was supposed to speak for itself, and to sell itself, sometimes even without the author's photograph on the back flap.

John Updike

For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity.

John Updike

It's so hard to make a good tee shot after a birdie.

John Updike

Most Americans haven't had my happy experience of living for thirteen years in a seventeenth-century house, since most of America lacks seventeenth-century houses.

John Updike

A seventeenth-century house can be recognized by its steep roof, massive central chimney and utter porchlessness. Some of those houses have a second-story overhang, emphasizing their medieval look.

John Updike

A seventeenth-century house tends to be short on frills like hallways and closets; you must improvise.

John Updike

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

John Updike

New York is, of course, many cities, and an exile does not return to the one he left.

John Updike

My complaint, as an exile who once loved New York and who likes to return a half-dozen times a year, is not that it plays host to extremes of the human condition: There is grandeur in that, and necessity.

John Updike

New York, like the Soviet Union, has this universal usefulness: It makes you glad you live elsewhere.

John Updike

I think you remember certain phrases from bad reviews. You don't remember all the bad reviews.

John Updike

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

John Updike

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

I like short stories.

John Updike

Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller.

John Updike

My generation was maybe the last in which you could set up shop as a writer and hope to make a living at it.

John Updike