John Updike Quotes

I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.

I don't like to talk about work in progress, but the novel I'm working on now is definitely not horror.

I just write the books that I think I would want to read.

I would like to write a book that wasn't so violent and weird, but I just don't think I can do that with my talent. I don't think it would come off.

I resist when someone calls me a novelist: it implies some kind of inherent superiority of the novel. I'm not a novelist, I'm a writer.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

It is easy to club people together, but there are bound to be influences of authors you've read. I grew up reading fast paced authors such as Sidney Sheldon and Jeffrey Archer, but to say I'm one of them isn't true; my style is intrinsically my own.

Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.

I have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas, and I like that definition, but it's the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part.

I have no favourite genre or style but treat each novel with the same care, imagination and craftsmanship. It's as difficult to write a crime or a children's novel with a touch of style and grace as it is a literary novel.

The novels take longer to write than the picture book texts, and they do take a different sort of concentration. However, a very short, simple story that works well is just as exciting to me as any longer and more complex book.

I try to write the kind of books I like to read.

No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest.

I primarily read fiction, and I read a good many wonderful books while writing 'The Visibles.'

Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

When I was in my late twenties, a friend suggested that, since I was an avid SF reader and had been since I was barely a teenager, that since it didn't look like the poetry was going where I wanted, I might try writing a science fiction story. I did, and the first story I ever wrote was 'The Great American Economy.'

I wrote speculative fiction because I loved to read it, and thought I could do better than some of the people who were getting published.

'Sag Harbor' was a very different book for me. It changed the way I thought about books that I wanted to do.

Fantasy is fantasy. It's fiction. It's not meant to be a textbook. I don't believe in letting research overwhelm the fiction. That's a danger of science fiction in particular, as opposed to fantasy. A lot of writers forget that what they're doing is supposed to be art.

I don't really think about genre. I like to write books that I'd love to read myself.

I actually admire some of the books by a lot of the writers who write magic realism very much, but it's not for me. It's not what I can do, but even if I could, I don't really want to try.

I find fantasy easier to write. If I'm going to write science fiction, I spend a lot more time thinking up justifications. I can write fantasy without thinking as much. I like to balance things out: a certain amount of fantasy and a certain amount of science fiction.

As much as I really like the screenwriting thing, the novel is where the author has so much control.

I cannot write a novel because I cannot work in continuity. My works are more abstract, may be, I will try short story writing.

I think I'm too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.