I write to make sense of my life." -John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey John Cheever More Quotes by John Cheever More Quotes From John Cheever It was a splendid summer morning and it seemed as if nothing could go wrong. John Cheever splendid summer morning Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house. Courage tastes of blood. Stand up straight. Admire the world. Relish the love of a gentle woman. John Cheever knives house blood The constants that I look for are a love of light and a determination to trace some moral chain of being. John Cheever light determination looks I love you not for the person you are, but for your possibilities. John Cheever possibility criticism love-you The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable. John Cheever justice love people Homesickness is . . . absolutely nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time. . . . You don't really long for another country. You long for something in yourself that you don't have, or haven't been able to find. John Cheever time long country For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably. John Cheever intelligent rain men Our country is the best country in the world. We are swimming in prosperity and our President is the best president in the world. We have larger apples and better cotton and faster and more beautiful machines. This makes us the greatest country in the world. Unemployment is a myth. Dissatisfaction is a fable. In preparatory school America is beautiful. It is the gem of the ocean and it is too bad. It is bad because people believe it all. Because they become indifferent. Because they marry and reproduce and vote and they know nothing. John Cheever beautiful believe country I've been homesick for countries I've never been, and longed to be where I couldn't be. John Cheever inspirational country travel A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey's gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind. John Cheever being-alone lonely loneliness Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream. John Cheever dream lying art Art is the triumph over chaos. John Cheever chaos triumph art Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house. John Cheever knives fear worry If there is anybody I detest, it is weak-minded sentimentalists-all those melancholy people who, out of an excess of sympathy for others, miss the thrill of their own essence and drift through life without identity, like a human fog, feeling sorry for everyone. John Cheever fog essence sorry To disguise nothing, to conceal nothing, to write about those things that are closest to our pain, our happiness; to write about our sexual clumsiness, the agonies of Tantalus, the depth of our discouragement-what we glimpse in our dreams-our despair. To write about the foolish agonies of anxiety, the refreshment of our strength when these are ended; to write about our painful search for self, jeopardized by a stranger in the post office, a half-seen face in a train window, to write about the continents and populations of our dreams, about love and death, good and evil, the end of the world. John Cheever pain dream writing Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world. John Cheever despair literature world When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places. John Cheever leaving family remember You can't expect to communicate with anyone if you're a bore. John Cheever bores communicate speech Then it is dark; it is a night where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountains. John Cheever kings dark night My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am as bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats. John Cheever cancer cat mean
