John Updike

Quotes

• “Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictabl...”
• “American art in general... takes to surreal exaggerations and metaphors; but its Puritan work ethic has little use for t...”
• “Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.”
• “The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”
• “Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.”
• “Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.”
• “Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn.”
• “What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.”
• “Humor is my default mode.”