Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; with... - John Updike

"Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed."

"Humor is my default mode."

"The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding."

"Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey."

"Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn."