"Art is like baby shoes. When you..." - Quote by John Updike

“New York, like the Soviet Union, has this universal usefulness: It makes you glad you live elsewhere.”

“Fiction is burdened for me with a sense of duty.”

“Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller.”

“Government money in the arts, I fear, can only deflect artists from their responsibility to find an authentic market for their products.”

“In our fine arts, not imitation, but creation is the aim... The details, the prose of nature, he should omit, and give us only the spirit and splendour.”

“The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.”

“Time is the stuff life is made of.”

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

“There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in some books which is very rare to find, and yet looks cheap enough. There may benothing lofty in the sentiment, or fine in the expression, but it is careless country talk. Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art. Some have this merit only.”