John Updike

The study of literature threatens to become a kind of paleontology of failure, and criticism a supercilious psychoanalysis of authors.

We are most alive when we're in love.

Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring — an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed.

Memory has a spottiness, as if the film was sprinkled with developer instead of immersed in it.

Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

In any interview, you do say more or less than you mean.

My interest generally is the hidden Americans; the ones who live far away from the headlines.

Golf's ultimate moral instruction directs us to find within ourselves a pivotal center of enjoyment: relax into a rhythm that fits the hills and swales, and play the shot at hand — not the last one, or the next one, but the one at your feet, in the poison ivy, where you put it.

All love comes from the family.

I know more about what it's like to be elderly and infirm and kind of stupid, the way you get forgetful, but on the other hand I'm a littler, wiser, dare we say? The word 'wisdom' has kind of faded out of our vocabulary, but yeah, I'm a little wiser.