John Cheever Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.

  John Cheever

  Rain, Taken, Writing

  "The Journals of John Cheever" by Robert Gottlieb, 1963.

  18 Copy quote

• All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

  John Cheever

  Men, Yankees, Fans

  Newsweek, October 20, 1986.

  27 Copy quote

• Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego.

  John Cheever

  Writing, Ego, Promise

  10 Copy quote

• Never eat a heavily sugared doughnut before you go on TV.

  John Cheever

  Goes On, Tvs, Doughnut

  John Cheever (1989). “The Letters of John Cheever”, Touchstone Books

  7 Copy quote

• For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.

  John Cheever

  Grief, Rain, Writing

  Accepting National Medal for Literature, en.wikiquote.org. April 27, 1982.

  11 Copy quote

• The organizations of men, like men themselves, seem subject to deafness, near-sightedness, lameness, and involuntary cruelty. We seem tragically unable to help one another, to understand one another.

  John Cheever

  Men, Organization, Perfection

  9 Copy quote

• The poet or storyteller who feels that he is competing with a superb double play in the World Series is a lost man. One would not want as a reader a man who did not appreciate the finesse of a double play.

  John Cheever

  Baseball, Men, Play

  4 Copy quote

• For these are not as they might seem to be, the ruins of our civilization, but are temporary encampment and outposts of the civilization that we - you and I - shall build.

  John Cheever

  Civilization, Might, Ruins

  John Cheever (1961). “Some Peoples, Places, and Things that Will Not Appear in My Next Novel”, New York : Harper

  4 Copy quote

• The irony of Christmas is always upon the poor in heart; the mystery of the solstice is always upon the rest of us.

  John Cheever

  Heart, Irony, Mystery

  John Cheever (2010). “Falconer”, p.163, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• Admite the world. Relish the love of a gentle woman. Trust in the lord.

  John Cheever

  World, Trust In The Lord, Gentle

  TheWapshot Chronicle ch. 36 (1957)

  4 Copy quote

• How can we describe the most exalted experience of our physical lives [sex], as if-jack, wrench, hubcap, and nuts-we were describing the changing of a flat tire?

  John Cheever

  Sex, Nuts, Tire

  John Cheever, Blake Bailey (2009). “John Cheever: Collected Stories and Other Writings”

  5 Copy quote

• These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.

  John Cheever

  New York, Light, Cities

  John Cheever, Blake Bailey (2009). “John Cheever: Collected Stories and Other Writings”

  25 Copy quote

• Falsehood is a critical element in fiction. Part of the thrill of being told a story is the chance of being hoodwinked. . .The telling of lies is a sort of sleight of hand that displays our deepest feelings about life.

  John Cheever

  Lying, Hands, Feelings

  6 Copy quote

• Children drown, beautiful women are mangled in automobile accidents, cruise ships founder, and men die lingering deaths in mines and submarines, but you will find none of this in my accounts.

  John Cheever

  Beautiful, Children, Men

  John Cheever (2016). “The Jewels of the Cabots”, p.13, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• People look for morals in fiction because there has always been a confusion between fiction and philosophy.

  John Cheever

  Philosophy, People, Confusion

  9 Copy quote

• The world that was not mine yesterday now lies spread out at my feet, a splendor. I seem, in the middle of the night, to have returned to the world of apples, the orchards of Heaven. Perhaps I should take my problems to a shrink, or perhaps I should enjoy the apples that I have, streaked with color like the evening sky.

  John Cheever

  Lying, Night, Sky

  4 Copy quote

• Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos (no less) and we can accomplish this only by the most vigilant exercise of choice, but in a world that changes more swiftly that we can perceive there is always the danger that our powers of selection will be mistaken and that the vision we serve will come to nothing.

  John Cheever

  Art, Exercise, Choices

  John Cheever (2010). “Collected Stories”, p.549, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• To be an American and unable to play baseball is comparable to being a Polynesian and unable to swim.

  John Cheever

  Softball, Baseball, Play

  6 Copy quote

• I was born into no true class and it was my decision early in life to insinuate myself into the middle class like a spy so that I would have an advantageous position of attack, but I seem now and then to have forgotten my mission, and to have taken my disguises too seriously.

  John Cheever

  Taken, Class, Decision

  5 Copy quote

• Fiction must compete with first-rate reporting. If you cannot write a story that is equal to a factual account of battle in the streets or demonstrations, then you can't write a story.

  John Cheever

  Writing, Battle, Fiction

  10 Copy quote

• I dream that my face appears on a postage stamp.

  John Cheever

  Dream, Faces, Fame

  10 Copy quote

• A page of good prose remains invincible.

  John Cheever

  Pages, Invincible, Prose

  "The Stories of John Cheever". Book by John Cheever, www.theguardian.com. 1978.

  5 Copy quote

• We praise Him, we bless Him, we adore Him, we glorify Him, and we wonder who is that baritone across the aisle and that pretty woman on our right who smells of apple blossoms. Our bowels stir and our cod itches and we amend our prayers for the spiritual life with the hope that it will not be too spiritual.

  John Cheever

  Spiritual, Prayer, Smell

  "The Journals of John Cheever" by Robert Gottlieb, 1956.

  9 Copy quote

• There isn't a king or a merchant prince in the whole world that I envy, for I always knew I was born to be a child of destiny and that I was never meant to wring my living from detestable, low, degrading, mean and ordinary kinds of business.

  John Cheever

  Kings, Children, Mean

  John Cheever (1973). “The Wapshot Chronicle”, HarperCollins Publishers

  4 Copy quote

• What I am going to write is the last of what I have to say. I will say that literature is the only consciousness we possess and that its role as consciousness must inform us of our ability to comprehend the hideous danger of nuclear power.

  John Cheever

  Writing, Nuclear, Roles

  "Home before Dark". Book by Susan Cheever, 1984.

  17 Copy quote

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