Customs and convictions change respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art. – John Updike
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. – John Updike
Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner. – John Updike
The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion. – John Updike
But on the first day came veiled spirits from all hours into his soul… a soft intoxication, which the atmosphere of nature, like that of a wine-store, communicated to him, spread itself, like an enchanted solitude around his soul. – Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Hesperus, or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography,