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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.

-John Cheever

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To Disguise Nothing, To

John Cheever

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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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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.

Fiction Is Experimentation; When It Ceases To Be That, It Ceases To Be Fiction.

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.

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.

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.

Homesickness Is Nothing. Fifty Percent Of The People In The World Are Homesick All The Time.

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.

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.

How Can A People Who Do Not Mean To Understand Death Hope To Understand Love, And Who Will Sound The Alarm?

I Do Not Understand The Capricious Lewdness Of The Sleeping Mind.

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.

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.

I've Been Homesick For Countries I've Never Been, And Longed To Be Where I Couldn't Be.

The Constants That I Look For Are A Love Of Light And A Determination To Trace Some Moral Chain Of Being.

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.

When The Beginnings Of Self Destruction Enter The Heart, It Seems No Bigger Than A Grain Of Sand.

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.

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.

I Don't Like To See All My Energies, All Of My Youth, Wasted In Fur Coats And Radios And Slipcovers.

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.

You Can't Expect To Communicate With Anyone If You're A Bore.

For Lovers, Touch Is Metamorphosis. All The Parts Of Their Bodies Seem To Change, And They Seem To Become Something Different And Better.

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.

I Dream That My Face Appears On A Postage Stamp.

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.

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.

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.

Novels Are About Men And Women And Children And Dogs, Not Politics.

Everything Outside Was Elegant And Savage And Fleshy. Everything Inside Was Slow And Cool And Vacant. It Seemed A Shame To Stay Inside.

All Literary Men Are Red Sox Fans - To Be A Yankee Fan In A Literate Society Is To Endanger Your Life.

The Main Emotion Of The Adult American Who Has Had All The Advantages Of Wealth, Education, And Culture Is Disappointment.

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.

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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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.

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Admite The World. Relish The Love Of A Gentle Woman. Trust In The Lord.

Trust In The Lord

A Page Of Good Prose Remains Invincible.

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I Write To Make Sense Of My Life." -john Cheever, Quoted In _cheever - A Life_ (2009) By Blake Bailey

I Was Here On Earth Because I Chose To Be.

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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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I Love You Not For The Person You Are, But For Your Possibilities.

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The Short Story Is The Literature Of The Nomad.

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

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.

Only The Opium Eater Truly Understands The Pain Of Death.

Then It Is Dark; It Is A Night Where Kings In Golden Suits Ride Elephants Over The Mountains.

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.

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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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.

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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