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" 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. "

John Updike

New York

New

Leaving

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" Writing makes you more human. "

John Updike

You

Human

" Somehow, it is hard to dislike a man once you have played a round of golf with him. "

" To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man. "

" In a city like New York, you're aware of the rich and poor. "

" I'm trying to get the terrorist out of the bugaboo category and into the category of a fellow human being. "

" When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. "

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

John Updike

Return

Exile

" 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. "

" We are drawn to artists who tell us that art is difficult to do and takes a spiritual effort, because we are still puritan enough to respect a strenuous spiritual effort. "

" The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop. "

" The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me. "

John Updike

Ink

Miracle

" Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better. "

" Books externalise our brains and turn our homes into thinking bodies. "

" Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. "

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

" I don't think women are dumb. "

" The cinema has done more for my spiritual life than the church. My ideas of fame, success and beauty all originate from the big screen. Whereas Christian religion is retreating everywhere and losing more and more influence; film has filled the vacuum and supports us with myths and action-controlling images. "

" 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. "

" I was raised in the Depression, when there was a great sense of dog-eat-dog and people fighting over scraps. "

" Young or old, a writer sends a book into the world, not himself. "

" My wife and I had children when we were children ourselves. "

" The first author I met socially was Joyce Cary. "

" I like short stories. "

John Updike

Short

Short Stories

" 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. "

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

" The lust to meet authors ranks low, I think, on the roll of holy appetites; but it is an authentic pang. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper. "