John Updike

Updike won almost every major literature award, except the Nobel prize.
He thought he was dying during his first attack of breathlessness in his twenties. The diagnosis was bronchial asthma, aggravated by his cats.
Probably best known for his Rabbit books, proving he favors naturalism and realism in his writing. "Rabbit Is Rich" (1981) and "Rabbit At Rest" (1990) both won the Pulitzer Prize.
His book, "The Witches of Eastwick", was adapted to a West End musical and performed at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London, and was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best New Musical in 2001 (2000 season).
Petitioned for the release of the legendary Sergei Parajanov from Ukrainian prisons.

With the waning of everything, with the waning of the sexual drive, the witch capacity, there probably goes a certain lessening of artistic passion. I suppose I feel that in my own work. The world would really be none the worse if I were not to write anymore. But I keep wanting to do it, in part to fill the time. I don't know what you've found, but nothing makes the time pass so much as writing. You look up, and two hours have gone by! You know? It's a wonderful antidote to boredom or dullness.
Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any pastime becomes creative when we care about doing it right, and/or better.
Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.
The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.
[on Gene Kelly] He had plenty of ginger but no Ginger: although he danced affectionately with Leslie Caron, amusingly with Debbie Reynolds, snappily with Judy Garland, bouncily with Rita Hayworth, broodily with Vera-Ellen, and respectfully with statuesque, stony-faced Cyd Charisse, we think of Gene Kelly as a guy in loafers and a tight T-shirt tap-dancing up a storm.

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