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“Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.”

John Updike

Writers on Themselves (1986)

“This airport has been designed with big windows viewing the runways, so if there's a crash everybody can feast upon it with their own eyes. The fireball, the fuselage doing a slow skidding twirl, shedding its wings.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.”

John Updike

Source: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 1

“…golf appeals to the idiot in us, and the child. … Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.”

John Updike

Essay The Bliss of Golf (1982), reprinted in Golf Dreams (1996)

“Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.”

John Updike book Couples

Source: Couples (1968), Ch. 1

“I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent canvas upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken.”

John Updike book The Centaur

The Centaur (1963)

“Figure out where you're going before you go there: he was told that a long time ago.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“[Harry to Janice, about the financial situation] "…You're in real trouble."
"I know… But you have to have faith. You've taught me that."
"I have?" He is pleasantly surprised, to think that in thirty-three years he has taught her anything. "Faith in what?"”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

"In us. In life," she says.
Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“All this probing and grappling we must do, out in society: how much easier, Annabelle thinks, it is to stay in rooms you know as well as your own body, having a warm meal and an evening of television, where it's all so comfortably one-way.”

John Updike book Rabbit Remembered

Rabbit Remembered (2000)

“I mean," he says, "how the hell do you think it feels? Sitting there and having the plane explode?”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“…If you could ever get the poor to vote in this country, you'd have socialism. But people want to think rich. That's the genius of the capitalist system: either you're rich, or you want to be, or you think you ought to be.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“The great thing about the dead, they make space.”

John Updike

Rabbit is Rich (1981)

“To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client; still, one must make the best of the case, for the purposes of Providence.”

John Updike

Act II
Buchanan Dying (1974)

“It rots a writer’s brain, it cretinises you. You say the same thing again and again, and when you do that happily you’re well on the way to being a cretin. Or a politician.”

John Updike

Interview in London Observer (30 August 1987)

“We hope the "real" person behind the words will be revealed as ignominiously as a shapeless snail without its shapely shell.”

John Updike

On “consumeristic appetite for interviews,” New York Times (17 August 1986)

“[Nelson, to Harry] "…I keep feeling hassled."
"That's life, Nelson. Hassle."”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

"I suppose."
Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“Who would have thought that the Internet, that's supposed to knit the world into a shining tyranny-proof ball, would be so grubbily adolescent?”

John Updike book Rabbit Remembered

Rabbit Remembered (2000)

“Well," his father says, "I'll say this for Slick Willie, he's brought the phrase out in the open. When I was young you had to explain to girls what it was. They could hardly believe they were supposed to do it.”

John Updike book Rabbit Remembered

Rabbit Remembered (2000)