Homesickness is nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time. – John Cheever
Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two. – John Cheever
The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable. – John Cheever
When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places. – John Cheever
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
People look for morals in fiction because there has always been a confusion between fiction and philosophy. – John Cheever
The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one’s life and discover one’s usefulness. – John Cheever
Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego. – John Cheever
All literary men are Red Sox fans – to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life. – John Cheever
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
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
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
