American - Novelist | March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009
A seventeenth-century house tends to be short on frills like hallways and closets; you must improvise.
John Updike
ShortYouHouseMustLikeImprovise
Reminiscence and self-parody are part of remaining true to oneself.
TrueOneselfPartRemaining
New York is, of course, many cities, and an exile does not return to the one he left.
New YorkNewReturnLeftCourseHe
New York is a city with virtually no habitable public space - only private spaces expensively maintained within the general disaster.
New YorkSpaceCityNewWithinOnly
My complaint, as an exile who once loved New York and who likes to return a half-dozen times a year, is not that it plays host to extremes of the human condition: There is grandeur in that, and necessity.
New YorkLovedYearNewHumanHost
New York, like the Soviet Union, has this universal usefulness: It makes you glad you live elsewhere.
LiveNew YorkYouNewSoviet Union
I think you remember certain phrases from bad reviews. You don't remember all the bad reviews.
ThinkRememberYouBadReviews
There's something very reassuring... about the written record.
SomethingReassuringVeryAbout
I must say, when I reread myself, it's the poetry I tend to look at. It's the most exciting to write, and it's over the quickest.
MyselfPoetryLookSayWriteOver
I like short stories.
ShortLikeStoriesShort Stories
Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller.
WorldLookingPublishersLoves
My generation was maybe the last in which you could set up shop as a writer and hope to make a living at it.
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