John Updike Quotes

It's always a really great feeling when I talk to people who watched 'Jett Jackson' because we were the same age. We were all kids. I was 13 when I started working on that show, and that was part of my childhood.

I still connect with original emotions. 'Night Moves' was written about 1961 or 1962 when I was in high school, and it was about what my friends and I did in that period.

I was eleven, then I was sixteen. Though no honors came my way, those were the lovely years.

I first read 'Tom Sawyer' when I was in 8th grade, 13 years old. I realised since that Mark Twain just bottled what it felt like to be a child.

Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.

The child from nine to 12 interests me very much. And so, those were the years that I like to write about, when I'm writing.

That reminds me of something that happened to me when I was a kid.

I liked being a teenager, but I would not go back for all the tea in China.

You never forget the discovery years. First kisses. The first time you try certain foods.

I grew up playing in clubs - that's my spiritual stomping ground.

When I read 'Stand By Me,' it was like, 'This is a look back at the same time period when I was growing up, and it was about kids, but it really felt like what it was like to have those powerful feelings of friendship at age 12.' That's what got to me.

Everybody remembers what it's like to be in high school. We really never leave those years behind.

I remember I'd come home from fifth, sixth grade, and I'd watch 'Saved by the Bell' and be like, 'I hope my high school experience is like that.' And it totally wasn't. It sucked.

My childhood was a happy one, spent in a tall house in South Kensington and later in East Sussex, but my early and mid teens were less successful.

You get 12 years of childhood, give or take.

When you're 15, you're not really talking about the vicissitudes of fate and failed love and poetry and swordfighting - not a lot is necessarily touching on your own personal experience.

My high school years were fun and frustrating, typical of the teen years. The most important accomplishment was meeting my wife, Ruth.

In 'A Likely Story,' I wanted to recreate the events, the mood, and the imagery of my life as a teenager. I was thirty-seven when I wrote it.

My childhood was endless - from eight to 18 felt like hundreds of years.

Some of my favorite memories happened in the 'Boy Meets World' classroom.

Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it.

When you are 15, everything is such high stakes, even tiny things. I think because of that, it is funny but sad at the same time.

A certain point came when I wanted to document growing-up adventures.

I wrote 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' right out of my own experiences and my own feelings when I was in sixth grade.

If you make a film about childhood, you've got to pick a moment - you know, 'The 400 Blows.'