Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that Mankind has invented yet.
John UpdikeI once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you're first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.
John UpdikeThe throat: how strange, that there is not more erotic emphasis upon it. For here, through this compound pulsing pillar, our life makes its leap into spirit, and in the other direction gulps down what it needs of the material world.
John UpdikeDream golf is simply golf played on another course. We chip from glass tables onto moving stairways; we swing in a straightjacket, through masses of cobweb, and awaken not with any sense of unjust hazard but only with a regret that the round can never be completed, and that one of our phantasmal companions has kept the scorecard.
John Updike