John Updike

“Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.”

“Eros is everywhere. It is what binds.”

“The good ending dismisses us with a touch of ceremony and throws a backward light of significance over the story just read. It makes it, as they say, or unmakes it. A weak beginning is forgettable, but the end of a story bulks in the reader's mind like the giant foot in a foreshortened photograph.”

“I suppose sequels are inevitable for a writer of a certain age.”

“Hobbies take place in the cellar and smell of airplane glue.”

“My transition from wanting to be a cartoonist to wanting to be a writer may have come about through that friendly opposition, that even-handed pairing, of pictures and words.”