"I think books should have secrets, like..." - Quote by John Updike

“How sad, how strange, we make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation.”

“You imagine a reader and try to keep the reader interested. That's storytelling. You also hope to reward the reader with a sense of a completed design, that somebody is in charge, and that while life is pointless, the book isn't pointless. The author knows where he is going. That's form.”

“What other sport holds out hope of improvement to a man or a woman over fifty? True, the pros begin to falter at around forty, but it is their putting nerves that go, not their swings. For a duffer like [me], the room for improvement is so vast that three lifetimes could be spent roaming the fiarways carving away at it, convinced that perfection lies just over the next rise. And that hope, perhaps, is the kindest bliss of all that golf bestows upon its devotees.”

“In every man's memory, with the hours when life culminated are usually associated certain books which met his views.”

“In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes.”

“One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work.”

“To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be a matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light.”

“Secrets are things we give to others to keep for us.”

“The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.”