John Updike Quotes

Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.

People do write books.

As a writer, you need a strong sense of self-belief. And when it comes to writing, I've always had that.

There are writers who go their whole lives and never hit that No. 1 spot.

I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It's called 'My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.' A publisher came to me and said, 'Write a book,' so I did. I wanted to call it 'Everybody Else Has Got a Book.'

My dream was, and always had been, to write a book. To be a writer.

Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.

Being a writer - even a best-selling one - is usually not anywhere near as public as being a movie star, at least not when I'm out in 'real life' like this. Not that I don't use what fame I have, every chance I get, to help sell more books.

Every single path is so different, but I would definitely say that the idea of what a writer is or should be is not a thing anymore. Everyone is redefining publishing, writing, and storytelling in general.

'Some day,' I said, 'I will be an author.'

You get early inoculation against the idea of success if you're a poet. When I published my first collection of sonnets, I sold about five copies; now kids study them for A level. Wanting to be successful in that other world of money or fame is not interesting. Poetry isn't like that, and it never has been.

What the readers want is a good story, and what the writers always want to luck into, it's a good story.

I'm the most translated writer in the world, behind Lenin, Tolstoy, Gorki and Jules Verne. And they're all dead.

When you're young, everything seems like a romance. At 96, I can still feel romantic about publishing young unknown writers.

Twitter is the best art for writers. I find it enticing.

I want to write books.

I want to leave behind a literary legacy.

A lot of time, if you spend too much time in Nashville, songwriters get caught up in charts and numbers and the music business politics.

I'm the author of several books, including children's books.

Writing a screenplay is daunting for sure, but I think that Hollywood needs them, so if you can manage to do that, there's certainly a value within it.

One of the epiphanies I had was that I got into publishing because I love literature.

I've been really lucky to work with some of the best writers in the business.

If there's one thing I've written that could survive into posterity, I'd want that to be the poetry.

I can't even imagine being Matt and Ross Duffer.

I think the fact that Gang Starr kept getting more and more successful was the reason we never thought about our age.