Most writers begin with ...

Most writers begin with accounts of their first home, their family, and the town, often from quite a hostile point of view-love/hate, let\'s say. In a way, this stepping outside, in an attempt to judge enough to create a duplicate of it, makes you an outsider. . . . I think it\'s healthy for a writer to feel like an outsider. If you feel like an insider you get committed to a partisan view, you begin to defend interests, so you wind up not really empathizing with all mankind.
Most writers begin with accounts of their first home, their family, and the town, often from quite a hostile point of view-love/hate, let's say. In a way, this stepping outside, in an attempt to judge enough to create a duplicate of it, makes you an outsider. . . . I think it's healthy for a writer to feel like an outsider. If you feel like an insider you get committed to a partisan view, you begin to defend interests, so you wind up not really empathizing with all mankind.
 John Updike

Quotes from the same author

Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
 See image
 John Updike
I didn't need to write historical epics, no, or science fiction, though I read a lot of science fiction as a kid and rather liked it. But I didn't have the mentality.
 See image
 John Updike
Man is a means for turning things into spirit and turning spirit into things.
 See image
 John Updike
Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.
 See image
 John Updike
You write because you don't talk very well, and maybe one of the reasons that I was determined to write was that I wasn't an orator, unlike my mother and my grandfather, who both spoke beautifully and spoke all the time. Maybe I grew up with too many voices around me, as a matter of fact.
 See image
 John Updike