Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego.
John CheeverAt 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.
John CheeverIt 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.
John CheeverMy 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.
John CheeverFiction 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.
John Cheever