John Updike

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing…

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the…

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them…

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness its peculiar magnitude permits no shading…

What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit…

Existence itself does not feel horrible it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have…

The first breath of adultery is the freest after it, constraints aping marriage develop…

We are most alive when we’re in love…

The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents…