The Good Quote
Open menu
Quotes
Authors
Topics
More
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
Home
Authors
John Cheever
American
Writer
About the author
Wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Strength
#Evil
#Knowledge
#Wisdom
The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Love
#People
#Deep
#Company
#Joy
That's the way I remember them, heading for an exit.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
People look for morals in fiction because there has always been a confusion between fiction and philosophy.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#People
#Morals
#Fiction
#Philosophy
#Confusion
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.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#World
#Literature
#Despair
#Lovers
#Salvation
It was a splendid summer morning and it seemed as if nothing could go wrong.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Nothing
#Wrong
#Summer
I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Mind
The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Life
#Usefulness
#Sense
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.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#People
#American
#Woman
#Writer
#Rain
#Ceremony
#Adultery
All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Life
#Fans
#Men
#Society
#Literary
#Yankee
When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Family
Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Fiction
Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Writing
#Writers
#Ego
#Promises
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.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Power
#Prose
#Beauty
#Battle
#Rain
#Grief
Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Fear
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.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Will
#Ability
#Power
#Consciousness
#Danger
#Literature
Art is the triumph over chaos.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Art
#Chaos
Homesickness is nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Time
#People
#Nothing
#World
#Homesickness
I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss - you can't do it alone.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Kiss
Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.
John Cheever,
American
Writer
#Strength
#Evil
#Knowledge
#Wisdom