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…

Quote by John Cheever

Topics: John Cheever Quotes

Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed...

Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed...

Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house.

Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house.

Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction.

Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction.

It was a splendid summer morning and it seemed as if nothing could go wrong.

It was a splendid summer morning and it seemed as if nothing could go wrong.

Homesickness is nothing Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the...

Homesickness is nothing Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the...

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

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

Wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the...

Wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the...

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the...

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the...

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a...

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a...

When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving...

When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving...

Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater...

Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater...

I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.

I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.

That's the way I remember them, heading for an exit.

That's the way I remember them, heading for an exit.

I sometimes go back to walk through the ghostly remains of Sutton Place where the...

I sometimes go back to walk through the ghostly remains of Sutton Place where the...

I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss - you can't do...

I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss - you can't do...

A collection of short stories is generally thought to be a horrendous clinker; an enforced...

A collection of short stories is generally thought to be a horrendous clinker; an enforced...

A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle...

A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle...

Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone...

Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone...

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who...

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who...

Being human is the most terrible loneliness in the universe.

Being human is the most terrible loneliness in the universe.