"Old age treats freelance writers pretty gently...." - Quote by John Updike

“You have a life and there are these volumes on either side that go unvisited; some day soon as the world winds he will lie beneath what he now stands on, dead as those insects whose sound he no longer hears, and the grass will go on growing, wild and blind.”

“Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.”

“Reagan has turned America into a tax haven.”

“So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age-I and my book-casting backward glances over out travel'd road.”

“Tastes in young people are changed by natural impetuosity, and in the aged are preserved by habit.”

“Youth, large, lusty, loving -- Youth, full of grace, force, fascination. Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?”

“If the writer does not cry, the reader does not cry.”

“I believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try to make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. Then you write for who you love whether she can read or write or not and whether she is alive or dead.”

“The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are.”