The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires.
John UpdikeWickedness was like food: once you got started it was hard to stop; the gut expanded to take in more and more.
John UpdikeWithin your own generation-the same songs, the same wars, the same attitudes toward those wars, the same rules and radio shows in the air-you can gauge the possibilities and impossibilities. With a person of another generation, you are treading water, playing with fire.
John UpdikeChildren are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us.
John UpdikeWhen I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but to a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. I think of the books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a countryish teen-aged boy finding them, and having them speak to him. The review, the stacks in Brentano's, are just hurdles to get over, to place the books on that shelf.
John Updike