Top 198 Quotes by John Updike

About John Updike

These are some quotes by American author John Updike Novelist, who lived between March 18, 1932 and January 27, 2009.

The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it.

The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it.

John Updike

The study of literature threatens to become a kind of paleontology of failure, and criticism a supercilious psychoanalysis of authors.

The study of literature threatens to become a kind of paleontology of failure, and criticism a supercilious psychoanalysis of authors.

John Updike

Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.

Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.

John Updike

My father taught only math.

My father taught only math.

John Updike

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

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

John Updike

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

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

John Updike

Fiction is burdened for me with a sense of duty.

Fiction is burdened for me with a sense of duty.

John Updike

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

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

John Updike

My last vivid boyhood fright from books came when I was 15; I was visiting my uncle and aunt in Greenwich, and, emboldened by my success with 'The Waste Land,' I opened their copy of 'Ulysses.' The whiff of death off those remorseless, closely written pages overpowered me. So: back to soluble mysteries, and jokes that were not cosmic.

John Updike

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

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

John Updike

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