Top 198 Quotes by John Updike

In becoming an icon, it is useful to die young.

For a long time, I was under the impression that 'Terry and the Pirates' was the best comic strip in the United States.

An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause.

But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.

Arabic is very twisting, very beautiful. The call to prayer is quite haunting; it almost makes you a believer on the spot.

Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.

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.

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

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