"My generation was maybe the last in..." - Quote by John Updike

“I complain a lot. That's one way of coping. But I'm in a profession where nobody tells you to quit. No board of other partners tells you it's time to get your gold watch, and no physical claim is made on you like an athlete or an actress. So I try to plug along on the theory that I can still do it. I still keep trying to produce prose, and some poetry, in the hope that I can find something to say about being alive, this country, but generally the human condition.”

“My life is, in a sense, trash. My life is only that of which the residue is my writing.”

“When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but to a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. I think of the books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a countryish teen-aged boy finding them, and having them speak to him. The review, the stacks in Brentano's, are just hurdles to get over, to place the books on that shelf.”

“I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.”

“I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people.”

“All these people helped make this book possible. But let me make one thing clear: If there are any errors or omissions in this book, these people are not responsible. In the end, there is only one person responsible for what I write, and that person, of course, is: Donald Trump.”

“To give you an idea how well I was doing at the time I quit, I was the only one who knew I quit.”

“Always be looking for that which you do well and that which you love doing, and when you find those two things together — man, you got it.”

“Do what you love and work for whom you admire the most, and you've given yourself the best chance in life you can.”