Background Image
...
Fear Tastes Like A Rusty Knife And Do Not Let Her Into Your House.
-John Cheever
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

Fear Tastes Like A

John Cheever
...
Fear Tastes Like A Rusty Knife And Do Not Let Her Into Your House.

Understanding the Quote: "fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into..."

This quote by John Cheever reflects deeply on the theme of fear. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Fear, Knives, Worry, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how John Cheever interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About John Cheever

John Cheever is celebrated for insightful thoughts on fear and knives. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 6
Topic
Fear
Knives
Worry
More From John Cheever
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.
Destiny
Evil
Imagination
I Have Always Been The Lover - Never The Beloved - And I Have Spent Much Of My Life Waiting For Trains, Planes, Boats, Footsteps, Doorbells, Letters, Telephones, Snow, Rain, Thunder.
Love
Rain
Snow
When The Beginnings Of Self Destruction Enter The Heart, It Seems No Bigger Than A Grain Of Sand.
Heart
Self
Sand
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.
Husband
Dark
Rainy Day
I've Been Homesick For Countries I've Never Been, And Longed To Be Where I Couldn't Be.
Inspirational
Country
Travel
I Was Here On Earth Because I Chose To Be.
Earth
The Main Emotion Of The Adult American Who Has Had All The Advantages Of Wealth, Education, And Culture Is Disappointment.
Disappointment
Adults
Culture
Wisdom We Know Is The Knowledge Of Good And Evil - Not The Strength To Choose Between The Two.
Wisdom
Two
Evil
I Don't Like To See All My Energies, All Of My Youth, Wasted In Fur Coats And Radios And Slipcovers.
Energy
Fur
Coats
Good Writers Are Often Excellent At A Hundred Other Things, But Writing Promises A Greater Latitude For The Ego.
Writing
Ego
Promise
To Be An American And Unable To Play Baseball Is Comparable To Being A Polynesian And Unable To Swim.
Softball
Baseball
Play
Sometimes The Easiest-seeming Stories To A Reader Are The Hardest Kind To Write.
Writing
Stories
Kind
For Lovers, Touch Is Metamorphosis. All The Parts Of Their Bodies Seem To Change, And They Seem To Become Something Different And Better.
Different
Body
Lovers
A Page Of Good Prose Remains Invincible.
Pages
Invincible
Prose
Homesickness Is Nothing. Fifty Percent Of The People In The World Are Homesick All The Time.
Home
People
World
The Short Story Is The Literature Of The Nomad.
Stories
Literature
Short Story
There Is A Terrible Sameness To The Euphoria Of Alcohol And The Euphoria Of Metaphor.
Alcohol
Metaphor
Terrible
When I Remember My Family, I Always Remember Their Backs. They Were Always Indignantly Leaving Places.
Family
Leaving
Remember
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.
Baseball
Men
Play
The Irony Of Christmas Is Always Upon The Poor In Heart; The Mystery Of The Solstice Is Always Upon The Rest Of Us.
Heart
Irony
Mystery
Only The Opium Eater Truly Understands The Pain Of Death.
Pain
Opium
I Love You Not For The Person You Are, But For Your Possibilities.
Love You
Criticism
Possibility
Admite The World. Relish The Love Of A Gentle Woman. Trust In The Lord.
World
Trust In The Lord
Gentle
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.
Men
Organization
Perfection
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.
Taken
Class
Decision
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?
Sex
Nuts
Tire
All Literary Men Are Red Sox Fans - To Be A Yankee Fan In A Literate Society Is To Endanger Your Life.
Men
Yankees
Fans
...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.
Love
Fall
Men
I Look Up The Telephone Number Of Alcoholics Anonymous. Then, My Hands Shaking, I Open The Bar And Drink The Leftover Whiskey, Gin And Vermouth-whatever I Can Lay My Shaking Hands On.
Hands
Numbers
Bars
People Look For Morals In Fiction Because There Has Always Been A Confusion Between Fiction And Philosophy.
Philosophy
People
Confusion
The Need To Write Comes From The Need To Make Sense Of One's Life And Discover One's Usefulness.
Writing
Needs
Make Sense
My God, The Suburbs! They Encircled The City's Boundaries Like Enemy Territory And We Thought Of Them As A Loss Of Privacy, A Cesspool Of Conformity And A Life Of Indescribable Dreariness In Some Split-level Village Where The Place Name Appeared In The New York Times Only When Some Bored Housewife Blew Off Her Head With A Shotgun.
New York
Loss
Cities
Fiction Is Art And Art Is The Triumph Over Chaos… To Celebrate A World That Lies Spread Out Around Us Like A Bewildering And Stupendous Dream.
Dream
Art
Lying
A Collection Of Short Stories Is Generally Thought To Be A Horrendous Clinker; An Enforced Courtesy For The Elderly Writer Who Wants To Display The Trophies Of His Youth, Along With His Trout Flies.
Elderly
Sea
Fishing
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.
Lying
Night
Sky
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.
Lying
Hands
Feelings
I Dream That My Face Appears On A Postage Stamp.
Dream
Faces
Fame
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.
Art
Exercise
Choices
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.
Grief
Rain
Writing
My Veins Are Filled, Once A Week With A Neapolitan Carpet Cleaner Distilled From The Adriatic And I Am As Bald As An Egg. However I Still Get Around And Am Mean To Cats.
Cancer
Mean
Cat
That's The Way I Remember Them, Heading For An Exit.
Way
Exit
Remember
A Lonely Man Is A Lonesome Thing, A Stone, A Bone, A Stick, A Receptacle For Gilbey's Gin, A Stooped Figure Sitting At The Edge Of A Hotel Bed, Heaving Copious Sighs Like The Autumn Wind.
Lonely
Loneliness
Being Alone
Who Reads Short Stories? One Is Asked, And I Like To Think That They Are Read By Men And Women In The Dentist's Office, Waiting To Be Called To The Chair; They Are Read On Transcontinental Plane Trips Instead Of Watching Banal And Vulgar Films Spin Out The Time Between Our Coasts; They Are Read By Discerning And Well-informed Men And Women Who Seem To Feel That Narrative Fiction Can Contribute To Our Understanding Of One Another And The Sometimes Bewildering World Around Us.
Men
Thinking
Office
I Can't Write Without A Reader. It's Precisely Like A Kiss - You Can't Do It Alone.
Writing
Kissing
Reader
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.
Dream
Pain
Writing
Now Working Is Terribly Painful And I'm Still Having A Fight With The Booze. I've Enlisted The Help Of A Doctor But It's Touch And Go. A Day For Me; A Day For The Hootch.
Fighting
Doctors
Helping
Everything Outside Was Elegant And Savage And Fleshy. Everything Inside Was Slow And Cool And Vacant. It Seemed A Shame To Stay Inside.
Savages
Shame
Vacant
All Things Of The Sea Belong To Venus; Pearls And Shells And Alchemists' Gold And Kelp And The Riggish Smell Of Neap Tides, The Inshore Green, And Purple Further Out And The Joy Of Distances And The Roar Of Falling Masonry, All These Are Hers, But She Doesn't Come Out Of The Sea For All Of Us.
Distance
Fall
Sea
For Me A Page Of Good Prose Is Where One Hears The Rain. A Page Of Good Prose Is When One Hears The Noise Of Battle.... A Page Of Good Prose Seems To Me The Most Serious Dialogue That Well-informed And Intelligent Men And Women Carry On Today In Their Endeavor To Make Sure That The Fires Of This Planet Burn Peaceably.
Rain
Intelligent
Men
How Can A People Who Do Not Mean To Understand Death Hope To Understand Love, And Who Will Sound The Alarm?
Mean
People
Alarms
It Was A Splendid Summer Morning And It Seemed As If Nothing Could Go Wrong.
Summer
Morning
Splendid
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.
Spiritual
Prayer
Smell
I Do Not Understand The Capricious Lewdness Of The Sleeping Mind.
Dream
Sleep
Mind
I Write To Make Sense Of My Life." -john Cheever, Quoted In _cheever - A Life_ (2009) By Blake Bailey
Writing
Blake
Make Sense
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.
New York
Light
Cities
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.
Writing
Battle
Fiction
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.
Rain
Taken
Writing
Avoid Kneeling In Unheated Stone Churches. Ecclesiastical Dampness Causes Prematurely Grey Hair.
Hair
Church
Stones
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.
Civilization
Might
Ruins
Then It Is Dark; It Is A Night Where Kings In Golden Suits Ride Elephants Over The Mountains.
Kings
Dark
Night
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.
Ignorance
Light
Two
Our Country Is The Best Country In The World. We Are Swimming In Prosperity And Our President Is The Best President In The World. We Have Larger Apples And Better Cotton And Faster And More Beautiful Machines. This Makes Us The Greatest Country In The World. Unemployment Is A Myth. Dissatisfaction Is A Fable. In Preparatory School America Is Beautiful. It Is The Gem Of The Ocean And It Is Too Bad. It Is Bad Because People Believe It All. Because They Become Indifferent. Because They Marry And Reproduce And Vote And They Know Nothing.
Beautiful
Country
Believe
I Believe That Writing Is An Account Of The Powers Of Extrication.
Believe
Writing
I Believe
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.
Night
Empty Life
Coffins
The Fear Of Death Is For All Of Us Everywhere, But For The Great Intelligence Of The Opium Eater It Is Beautifully Narrowed Into The Crux Of Drugs.
Death
Drug
Crux
Fear Tastes Like A Rusty Knife And Do Not Let Her Into Your House.
Fear
Knives
Worry
You Can't Expect To Communicate With Anyone If You're A Bore.
Speech
Communicate
Bores
The Novel Remains For Me One Of The Few Forms Where We Can Record Man's Complexity And The Strength And Decency Of His Longings. Where We Can Describe, Step By Step, Minute By Minute, Our Not Altogether Unpleasant Struggle To Put Ourselves Into A Viable And Devout Relationship To Our Beloved And Mistaken World.
Struggle
Men
Records
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.
Despair
Literature
World
The Novel Remains For Me One Of The Few Forms Where We Can Record Man's Complexity And The Strength And Decency Of His Longings.
Men
Records
Longing
Art Is The Triumph Over Chaos.
Art
Triumph
Chaos
The Secret Of Keeping Young Is To Read Children's Books. You Read The Books They Write For Little Children And You'll Keep Young. You Read Novels, Philosophy, Stuff Like That And It Makes You Feel Old.
Children
Philosophy
Book
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.
Views
Rivers
Rude
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.
Kings
Children
Mean
Never Eat A Heavily Sugared Doughnut Before You Go On Tv.
Goes On
Tvs
Doughnut
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.
Friendship
Athletic
Exaltation
Homesickness Is . . . Absolutely Nothing. Fifty Percent Of The People In The World Are Homesick All The Time. . . . You Don't Really Long For Another Country. You Long For Something In Yourself That You Don't Have, Or Haven't Been Able To Find.
Country
Time
Long
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.
Beautiful
Children
Men
Fear Tastes Like A Rusty Knife And Do Not Let Her Into Your House. Courage Tastes Of Blood. Stand Up Straight. Admire The World. Relish The Love Of A Gentle Woman.
Blood
Knives
House
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.
Friendship
Light
Smell
Novels Are About Men And Women And Children And Dogs, Not Politics.
Dog
Children
Men
The Deep Joy We Take In The Company Of People With Whom We Have Just Recently Fallen In Love Is Undisguisable.
Love
People
Justice
If There Is Anybody I Detest, It Is Weak-minded Sentimentalists-all Those Melancholy People Who, Out Of An Excess Of Sympathy For Others, Miss The Thrill Of Their Own Essence And Drift Through Life Without Identity, Like A Human Fog, Feeling Sorry For Everyone.
Sorry
Fog
Essence
Without A Reader, I Cannot Write. It's Like A Kiss: They Cannot Be Done Alone.
Writing
Kissing
Done
Fiction Is Experimentation; When It Ceases To Be That, It Ceases To Be Fiction.
Writing
Fiction
Cease
The Constants That I Look For Are A Love Of Light And A Determination To Trace Some Moral Chain Of Being.
Determination
Light
Looks
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.
Writing
Nuclear
Roles
Trending Author
Sherman Alexie
James Truslow Adams
James Nachtwey
Burt Reynolds
Teresa Heinz
Sonny Bono
Category
Information