John Updike Quotes

My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow.

I'm very involved in the writing on every level.

My job as an author - at least the way I think of it - is to make a story that is coded and puzzling enough to entice conversation and interpretation, but also to do the opposite: to make some things clear so that it is meaningful in some way, not just a random assemblage of ideas.

To me, the writer's main job is to just make the story unscroll in such a way that the reader is snared - she's right there, seeing things happen and caring about them. And if you dedicate yourself to this job, the meanings more or less take care of themselves. That's the theory, anyway.

I like looking at a book and asking myself, 'How do I replicate that experience I just had as a reader?'

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

The essential gesture of the contemporary novel is to get people to turn the page, to entertain them, and I hate that. I want a novel where the gesture is towards existential investigation on every page. That, to me, is thrilling.

A novel must work as a story because no one's going to get to the other themes if you don't entertain the reader. But I like to have another layer of meaning, although you can read the book on one level and not bother with that other layer.

This world of ours has been constructed like a superbly written novel: we pursue the tale with avidity, hoping to discover the plot.

It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.

I wanted to write a story that was different than what I've done before - so I decided to write dual love stories that will keep the reader wondering how the stories will come together by the end.

Each book needs a good beginning and a good ending. People get pissed off when you don't close things off properly at the end.

The first paragraph. The last paragraph. That's where the story is going and how it's going to end. Or else you'll go off in a hundred different directions.

I can certainly be surprised by turns a story takes, but usually not once I'm actually in the writing/drawing stage. In the plotting stage, anything can happen. That's why I try to finish that part before I start writing. I may be exaggerating here - I'm sure there are times when I think of something part-way through that changes the story, but the ultimate outcome doesn't change. Or not yet. It could always happen.

To be simple, I would say a story has to have a bit of narrative, if only "she says," and then enough of a creation of a different time and place to transport the reader.

I don't ignore continuity, and try my best to stick as closely to the current status quo as possible, but it's not my primary concern when I start a story.

[Noah Hawley] just a fantastic writer. It's always about the script, it's always about the book; it always is. If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage. That's what attracted me to him first and foremost.

When asked for advice by beginners. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.

Chronology can be dangerous. You can get so linear that it becomes robotic for the reader.

With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people, and it has to make sense and end in a way that is satisfying. So I spend a lot more time thinking about that. Then the writing itself usually is easier for me, because I know where it's going.

My stories do have plot. They're not just scattered language; they're controlled, toward an end.

If your life were a book, and you were the author, how would you want your story to go?

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.

Too many writers think that all you need to do is write well-but that's only part of what a good book is. Above all, a good book tells a good story. Focus on the story first. Ask yourself, 'Will other people find this story so interesting that they will tell others about it?' Remember: A bestselling book usually follows a simple rule, 'It's a wonderful story, wonderfully told'; not, 'It's a wonderfully told story.'

I'm really trying to focus on the storytelling, more so than ever before I think, partly because it makes for easier pages.