The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't; whichever seems likelier to win an effect.
John UpdikeFiction is in danger of becoming a kind of poetry. Only other poets read it. Only other fiction writers care about it.
John UpdikeLiterature gives us models of living human beings who may not agree with us and even be our enemies. D. H. Lawrence said that the purpose of literature was to expand our sympathies. To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man. And this conflict cannot be easily reconciled. The tension is always there as a kind of a pain in the human condition.
John UpdikeI have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again.
John Updike