John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updikewas an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth18 March 1932
CountryUnited States of America
writing thinking waiting
I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again.
writing eggs chickens
Writing doesn't require drive. It's like saying a chicken has to have drive to lay an egg.
country writing care
In a country this large and a language even larger ... there ought to be a living for somebody who cares and wants to entertain and instruct a reader.
writing should-have voice
Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear.
writing something-new
There's always something new by looking at the same thing over and over.
writing sea sailing
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.
writing merit artistic
The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.
writing trying busy
Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or more - a day to write. Some very good things have been written on an hour a day.
new-york book writing
When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but to a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. I think of the books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a countryish teen-aged boy finding them, and having them speak to him. The review, the stacks in Brentano's, are just hurdles to get over, to place the books on that shelf.
book writing wind
Fiction is very greedy. It will take all you know and then some. The first novel I tried to write, I was struck by this - the appetite of the blank page for ever more information, ever more data. An empty book is a greedy thing. You are right: You wind up using everything you know, and often more than once.
wall writing doors
A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.
easter new-york writing
When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.
nice moving writing
Writing fiction is like music. You have to keep it moving. You can have slow movements but there has to be a sense of momentum, of going someplace. You hear a snatch of Beethoven and it has a sense of momentum that is unmistakably his. That's a nice quality if you can do it in fiction.
kings hero writing
We're past the age of heroes and hero kings. ... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.