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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.
-John Cheever
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The Novel Remains For

John Cheever
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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.

Understanding the Quote: "the novel remains for me one of the few forms where we..."

This quote by John Cheever reflects deeply on the theme of men. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Men, Records, Longing, 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 men and records. 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: 82287
Topic
Men
Records
Longing
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Without A Reader, I Cannot Write. It's Like A Kiss: They Cannot Be Done Alone.
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Fear Tastes Like A Rusty Knife And Do Not Let Her Into Your House.
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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.
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I Can't Write Without A Reader. It's Precisely Like A Kiss - You Can't Do It Alone.
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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.
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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.
Night
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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.
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The Need To Write Comes From The Need To Make Sense Of One's Life And Discover One's Usefulness.
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I Dream That My Face Appears On A Postage Stamp.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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To Be An American And Unable To Play Baseball Is Comparable To Being A Polynesian And Unable To Swim.
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I've Been Homesick For Countries I've Never Been, And Longed To Be Where I Couldn't Be.
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I Love You Not For The Person You Are, But For Your Possibilities.
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I Was Here On Earth Because I Chose To Be.
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The Irony Of Christmas Is Always Upon The Poor In Heart; The Mystery Of The Solstice Is Always Upon The Rest Of Us.
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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.
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A Page Of Good Prose Remains Invincible.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Never Eat A Heavily Sugared Doughnut Before You Go On Tv.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It Was A Splendid Summer Morning And It Seemed As If Nothing Could Go Wrong.
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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.
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Good Writers Are Often Excellent At A Hundred Other Things, But Writing Promises A Greater Latitude For The Ego.
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People Look For Morals In Fiction Because There Has Always Been A Confusion Between Fiction And Philosophy.
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All Literary Men Are Red Sox Fans - To Be A Yankee Fan In A Literate Society Is To Endanger Your Life.
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Only The Opium Eater Truly Understands The Pain Of Death.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That's The Way I Remember Them, Heading For An Exit.
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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.
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Avoid Kneeling In Unheated Stone Churches. Ecclesiastical Dampness Causes Prematurely Grey Hair.
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I Believe That Writing Is An Account Of The Powers Of Extrication.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You Can't Expect To Communicate With Anyone If You're A Bore.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Novels Are About Men And Women And Children And Dogs, Not Politics.
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Homesickness Is Nothing. Fifty Percent Of The People In The World Are Homesick All The Time.
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When I Remember My Family, I Always Remember Their Backs. They Were Always Indignantly Leaving Places.
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Art Is The Triumph Over Chaos.
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Admite The World. Relish The Love Of A Gentle Woman. Trust In The Lord.
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Everything Outside Was Elegant And Savage And Fleshy. Everything Inside Was Slow And Cool And Vacant. It Seemed A Shame To Stay Inside.
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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.
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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?
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Nuts
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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.
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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.
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I Write To Make Sense Of My Life." -john Cheever, Quoted In _cheever - A Life_ (2009) By Blake Bailey
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Blake
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The Short Story Is The Literature Of The Nomad.
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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.
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