"I think my first story sold for..." - Quote by John Updike

“My golf is so delicate, so tenuously wired together with silent inward prayers, exhortations and unstable visualizations, that the sheer pressure of an additional pair of eyes crumbles the whole rickety structure into rubble.”

“Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture, whether of cover cloth, glazed jacket, or flexible paperback.”

“Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller.”

“You can't learn to write in college. It's a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do - and they don't. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don't want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who's the bore of all time.”

“The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively,as if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well learned.”

“Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairytale artist.”

“If I didn't make it in baseball, I won't have made it workin'. I didn't like to work.”

“Take the job you would take if you were independently wealthy. You're going to do well at it.”

“I have had an inordinate and painful concern for the audience in my writing career.”