A Quote by John Updike

Toni Morrison has a habit, perhaps traceable to the pernicious influence of William Faulkner, of plunging into the narrative before the reader has a clue to what is going on.

John Updike

Quote Topics

Before Clue Faulkner Going Habit Influence Narrative Perhaps Pernicious Reader William

Quote Author

John Updike
American - Novelist
March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009

Toni Morrison was a big influence on my work since I was a teenager, what she did with English. I joke that I think she speaks 20 Englishes simultaneously, that she knows how to do that.

Robin Coste Lewis

I loved 1930's women's pictures'films by Josef Von Sternberg or William Wyler. So, I fashioned a style out of that. The integrity and ethos of what I would write, however, came from the films of Ousmane Sembene and from reading Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath and Alice Walker.

Kola Boof

I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.

Ken Burns

I don't think there was a time I ever thought of myself as anything but a writer. I thought I was going to be the next Toni Morrison.

Shonda Rhimes

I have written about some truly great writers - John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, and William Faulkner. Faulkner and Frost were the very peaks of American poetry and fiction in the 20th century.

Jay Parini

I love Toni Morrison and Jeanette Winterson. 'The Passion' is my favourite book.

Vanessa Diffenbaugh

I read 'Song of Solomon' by Toni Morrison in college, and it just blew my mind.

Jamila Woods

Toni Morrison seems to have a lot of faith in people - that's what I mean by gentle power.

George Saunders

My father was among the first of his generation to look into writers who've become part of the American lit. canon. When he wrote his master's thesis on William Faulkner in the Forties, he couldn't find anybody on the faculty at Columbia University to oversee it because they didn't read Faulkner.

Antonya Nelson

I adore Toni Morrison. I think we would all be better writers if we read more of her.

Tara Westover

When Toni Morrison said 'write the book you want to read,' she didn't mean everybody.

Fran Lebowitz

I still love Carson McCullers and Raymond Carver and Toni Morrison and James Baldwin.

Jacqueline Woodson

I'm really influenced by Southern novelists, not many movie people. More like John Faulkner, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Flannery O'Connor, John Steinbeck, and people like that.

Billy Bob Thornton

I'm a huge fan of Toni Morrison. I just think she's so incredible. And also Nayyirah Waheed, who's a poet.

Amandla Stenberg

When I read Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros as a freshman at Rutgers, it all clicked - that writing was all I wanted to do. It became my calling.

Junot Diaz

I am very bad at remembering the books I've read and so recently I had a wonderful experience. I decided I wanted to teach Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. I hadn't read it in twenty-five years. I was surprised to find how much I drew from that book. Stole from that book, learned from that book about writing. I had forgotten and there it was. Morrison has called that text faulted. I cannot see how.

Samantha Hunt

A Quote by John Updike

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors