John Cheever Quotes - Page 3

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• 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.

  10 Copy quote

• I sometimes go back to walk through the ghostly remains of Sutton Place where the rude, new buildings stand squarely in one another's river views.

  John Cheever

  Views, Rivers, Rude

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

  8 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

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• 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)

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• 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”

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• Love with its paraphernalia of sexuality, jealousy, nostalgia and exaltation was easier to reognize than friendship, which seemed to have (excepting athletic equipment) no paraphernalia at all.

  John Cheever

  Friendship, Athletic, Exaltation

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• 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

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• 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

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

  John Cheever

  Philosophy, People, Confusion

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• She cried for herself, she cried because she was afraid that she herself might die in the night, because she was alone in the world, because her desperate and empty life was not an overture but an ending, and through it all she could see was the rough, brutal shape of a coffin.

  John Cheever

  Night, Empty Life, Coffins

  John Cheever (2010). “Collected Stories”, p.97, Random House

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• It is not, as somebody once wrote, the smell of corn bread that calls us back from death; it is the lights and signs of love and friendship.

  John Cheever

  Friendship, Light, Smell

  John Cheever (1958). “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill, and Other Stories: By John Cheever”, New York, Harper

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• 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

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

  John Cheever

  Softball, Baseball, Play

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• 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

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• 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

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

  John Cheever

  Dream, Faces, Fame

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• I don't like to see all my energies, all of my youth, wasted in fur coats and radios and slipcovers.

  John Cheever

  Energy, Fur, Coats

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

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• 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.

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• I write to make sense of my life." -John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey

  John Cheever

  Writing, Blake, Make Sense

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• The writer cultivates, extends, raises and inflates his imagination, sure that this is his destiny, his usefulness, his contribution to the understanding of good and evil. As he inflates his imagination he inflates his capacity for evil.

  John Cheever

  Destiny, Evil, Imagination

  "Going To The Tigers" by Robert Cohen, www.believermag.com. February 2010.

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• At my back I hear the word-"homosexual"-and it seems to split my world in two.... It is ignorance, our ignorance of one another, that creates this terrifying erotic chaos. Information, a crumb of information, seems to light the world.

  John Cheever

  Ignorance, Light, Two

  "The Journals of John Cheever" by Robert Gottlieb, 1966.

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• ...the sounds next door served as a kind of trip wire: I seemed to stumble and fall on my face, skinning and bruising myself here and there and scattering my emotional and intellectual possessions. There was no point in pretending that I had not fallen, for when we are stretched out in the dirt we must pick ourselves up and brush off our clothes. This then, in a sense, is what I did, reviewing my considered opinions on marriage, constancy, man's nature, and the importance of love. When I had picked up my possessions and repaired my appearance, I fell asleep.

  John Cheever

  Love, Fall, Men

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

  5 Copy quote

• Alice Malloy had dark, stringy hair, and even her husband, who loved her more than he knew, was sometimes reminded by her lean face of a tenement doorway on a rainy day, for her countenance was long, vacant, and weakly lighted, a passage for the gentle transports and miseries of the poor.

  John Cheever

  Husband, Dark, Rainy Day

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

  6 Copy quote

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