John Updike

Born 18 March 1932 · Died 27 January 2009

John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career.

Quotes

“The city overwhelmed our expectations. The Kiplingesque grandeur of Waterloo Station, the Eliotic despondency of the brick row in Chelsea … the Dickensian nightmare of fog and sweating pavement and besmirched cornices.”
On London, in “A Madman”, The New Yorker 22 December 1962
“The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.”
p. 231
“Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.”
Foreword to Hugging the Shore 1983
“A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.”
Introduction to The Best American Short Stories of 1984 1984
“Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.”
Couples, Chapter 1