"When I went away to college, I..." - Quote by John Updike

“There's almost nothing worse to live with than a struggling artist.”

“Government money in the arts, I fear, can only deflect artists from their responsibility to find an authentic market for their products.”

“Why does life feel, to us as we experience it, so desperately urgent and so utterly pointless at the same time?”

“I go too long without picking up a good book, I feel like I've done nothing useful with my life.”

“There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.”

“I have no liking for novels or stories - none in the world; and so, whenever I read one - which is not oftener than once in two years, and even in these same cases I seldom read beyond the middle of the book - my distaste for the vehicle always taints my judgment of the literature itself, as a matter of course; and also of course makes my verdict valuless. Are you saying "You have written stories yourself." Quite true: but the fact that an Indian likes to scalp people is no evidence that he likes to be scalped.”

“The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates.”

“Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.”

“Does college pay? They do if you are a good open-field runner.”