"Americans have been conditioned to respect newness,..." - Quote by John Updike

“I write about, more or less, everything I can think of, that is I stretch my imagination as far as it'll go. I am kind of stuck in the middle as far as my life goes, and hence my imagination tends to zero in on things which are indeed in the middle. That is, I don't write about the very rich, who I scarcely know, or the very poor who I don't know very well either.”

“I suppose sequels are inevitable for a writer of a certain age.”

“The great thing about the dead, they make space.”

“Civilization is the encouragement of differences.”

“Culture is - it is a reflection of our moment in our time, right? And in present culture is the way we express how we're feeling about the moment.”

“I don't think culture is something you can describe.”

“Most Americans haven't had my happy experience of living for thirteen years in a seventeenth-century house, since most of America lacks seventeenth-century houses.”

“I see Donald Trump as a phenomenon of an expression of certain fears, certain resentments, that have been a running thread in American history.”

“There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.”