"I can't bear to finish things, beyond..." - Quote by John Updike

“I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent canvas upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken.”

“A computer and a cat are somewhat alike - they both purr, and like to be stroked, and spend a lot of the day motionless. They also have secrets they don't necessarily share.”

“In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity.”

“Music is the purest form of art... therefore true poets...seek to express the universe in terms of music. The singer has everything within him. The notes come out from his very life. They are not materials gathered from outside.”

“The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung.”

“What is art? Nature concentrated.”

“Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.”

“I hope I need not confess that a large part of my stock in trade consists of platitudes rescued from the cobwebbed shelves of yesterday... This borrowing and refurbishing of shop-worn goods, as a matter of fact, is the invariable habit of traders in ideas, at all times and everywhere. It is not, however, that all the conceivable human notions have been thought out; it is simply, to be quite honest, that the sort of men who volunteer to think out new ones seldom, if ever, have wind enough for a full day's work.”

“Every once in a while, I get mad. 'The Lorax' came out of my being angry. The ecology books I'd read were dull... In 'The Lorax,' I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.”