When the beginnings of self destruction enter the heart, it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.
John CheeverNow working is terribly painful and I'm still having a fight with the booze. I've enlisted the help of a doctor but it's touch and go. A day for me; a day for the hootch.
John CheeverI write to make sense of my life." -John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey
John CheeverThe organizations of men, like men themselves, seem subject to deafness, near-sightedness, lameness, and involuntary cruelty. We seem tragically unable to help one another, to understand one another.
John CheeverGood writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego.
John CheeverWho reads short stories? one is asked, and I like to think that they are read by men and women in the dentist's office, waiting to be called to the chair; they are read on transcontinental plane trips instead of watching banal and vulgar films spin out the time between our coasts; they are read by discerning and well-informed men and women who seem to feel that narrative fiction can contribute to our understanding of one another and the sometimes bewildering world around us.
John Cheever