171 Quotes by John Cheever

Was his memory failing or had he so disciplined it in the repression of unpleasant facts that he had damaged his sense of the truth?

The music came through clearly. The new instrument had a much purer tone, she thought, than the old one. She decided that tone was most important and that she could conceal the cabinet behind a sofa. But as soon as she had made her peace with the radio, the interference began.

Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil – not the strength to choose between the two.

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.

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.

He saw the role of the serious writer as both lofty and practical in the same instant. He used to say that literature was one of the first indications of civilization. He used to say that a fine piece of prose could not only cure a depression, it could clear up a sinus headache. Like many great healers, he meant to heal himself.

You can’t expect to communicate with anyone if you’re a bore.

And walking back from the river I remember the galling loneliness of my adolescence, from which I do not seem to have completely escaped. It is the sense of the voyeur, the lonely, lonely boy with no role in life but to peer in at the lighted windows of other people’s contentment and vitality. It seems comical – farcical – that, having been treated so generously, I should be struck with this image of a kid in the rain walking along the road shoulders of East Milton.

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.