"Being a famous writer is a little..." - Quote by John Updike
Being a famous writer is a little like being a tall dwarf. You're on the edge of normality.
More by John Updike
“My reading as a child was lazy and cowardly, and it is yet. I was afraid of encountering, in a book, something I didn't want to know.”
“Vagueness and procrastination are ever a comfort to the frail in spirit.”
“Not judginess, but openness and curiosity are our proper business. I'm still trying to educate myself. I don't think you need to keep rehearsing your instincts. Far better to seek out models of what you can't do.”
More on Fame
“I didn't even need America, I was so popular outside the country, until the prosecutin' attorney came from Washington, and said, judge, we cannot let this man go to Japan and fight, because they are anti-American.Now, if I want to leave the country, I know how to leave. Tomorrow. Quick. Easy. If I really want to leave. That's not the intention. The intention is to stop me from makin' a livin'. To punish me.”
“There's a machine that I have nothing to do with. It's called the "Tupac Machine."”
“I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.”
More on Identity
“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.”
“The country is provincial; it becomes ridiculous when it tries to ape Paris.”
“I am whatever you say I am; if I wasn't, then why would you say I am.”