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" I should mention something that nobody ever thinks about, but proofreading takes a lot of time. After you write something, there are these proofs that keep coming, and there's this panicky feeling that 'This is me and I must make it better.' "

John Updike

You

Nobody

Better

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" If my mother hadn't been trying to be a writer, I don't know if I would have thought of it myself. "

" Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them. "

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

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

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" Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner. "

" Nature refuses to rest. "

" 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. "

" The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion. "

John Updike

Inner

Good

" Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered. "

" Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went. "

" There should always be something gratuitous about art, just as there seems to be, according to the new-wave cosmologists, something gratuitous about the universe. "

" A person believes various things at various times, even on the same day. "

" 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. "

" I see no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic-strip novel masterpiece. "

" My actinic keratosis is a result of the triumphalism of the beach. The sun exacerbates it. "

" What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. "

" We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one. "

" Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better. "

" I like short stories. "

John Updike

Short

Short Stories

" What interests me is why men think of women as witches. It's because they're so fascinating and exasperating, so other. "

John Updike

Men

Women

" 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.' "

" I still want to give my public, such as it is, a book a year. "

" It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules. "

" 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

Hope

Last

" My attempt has been really to, beyond making a record of contemporary life, which is what you inevitably do, is trying to make beautiful books - books that are in some way beautiful, that are models of how to use the language, models of honest feeling, models of care. "

" Thinking it over, I can't locate another artist in the Updike family. "

" I seem to have this need to belong to some church. I get worried on Sunday mornings. "

" Memories, impressions and emotions from the first 20 years on earth are most writers' main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant. "