Authors — Quotes

John Updike Quotes: 12

Humor is my default mode.
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.
American art in general... takes to surreal exaggerations and metaphors; but its Puritan work ethic has little use for the playful self-indulgence behind Parisian Surrealism.
What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.
Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn.
It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.
My Father's Tears and Other Stories
Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.
Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
A Month Of Sundays
The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.
If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
Rabbit, Run
Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.