John Cheever
John Cheever
John William Cheeverwas an American novelist and short story writer. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Westchester suburbs, old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy, Massachusetts, where he was born, and Italy, especially Rome. He is "now recognized as one of the most important short fiction writers of the 20th century." While Cheever is perhaps best remembered for his...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth27 May 1912
CountryUnited States of America
He had that spooky bass voice meant to announce that he had entered the kingdom of manhood, but Rosalie knew that he was still outside the gates.
I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss-you can't do it alone.
It was a splendid summer morning and it seemed as if nothing could go wrong.
Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house.
The short story is the literature of the nomad.
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.
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.
There is a terrible sameness to the euphoria of alcohol and the euphoria of metaphor.
You can't expect to communicate with anyone if you're a bore.
Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil - not the strength to choose between the two.
The main emotion of the adult American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.
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.
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.
I love you not for the person you are, but for your possibilities.