“I’ve been homesick for countries I’ve never been, and longed to be where I couldn’t be.”

—John Cheever

“I’ve been homesick for countries I’ve never been, and longed to be where I couldn’t be.”

John Cheever

“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.”

—from The Journals of 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

“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.”

—John Cheever

“The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.”

John Cheever (1912-1982)

“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

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

—John Cheever

“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.”

—John Cheever

“Tony went back to school on Monday and Nailles -- drugged -- went off to work and everything was as wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful as it had been. ”

—John Cheever, from Bullet Park
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