"I suppose sequels are inevitable for a..." - Quote by John Updike

“Accent the ugly until it becomes gorgeous.”

“There's almost nothing worse to live with than a struggling artist.”

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

“The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not.”

“The way for a person to develop a style is (a) to know exactly what he wants to say, and (b) to be sure he is saying exactly that.”

“It's much more important to write than to be written about.”

“I don't worry about it because we are all growing old. If I were the only one I would worry. But we're all in the same boat, and all of my friends are coming with me. We all go toward old age. How many years left we don't know. We just have to accept it.”

“What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe. It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul quieter.”

“He looked very old. He looked, James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone lying on the sand; he looked as if he had become physically what was always at the back of both of their minds-that loneliness which was for both of them the truth about things.”