John UpdikeThinkers

America is beyond power such that, paradoxically, beneath her patient bombers, paradise is treated as possible... it acts as in a dream, as a face of God such that wherever America is, the idea follows, there is freedom, and wherever America is not, madness rules with chains, darkness strangles millions.

America is a country where life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

Art is like baby shoes in that, when you coat them with gold they can no longer be worn.

Comedy is decisively different than tragedy in the fact that tragedy denies us another chance.

Criticism is to writing as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Enough is rarely in fact enough. When it comes to sex and money only too much is enough.

Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that mankind has invented yet.

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.

New York City is, for writers, a bottle full of tapeworms trying to feed on each other.

New York City ought to be called Skyscraper National Park.

The New Yorker is one who secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.

Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, just as extreme self-solicitude is the enemy of well-being.