All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

When the beginnings of self destruction enter the heart, it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.

I look up the telephone number of Alcoholics Anonymous. Then, my hands shaking, I open the bar and drink the leftover whiskey, gin and vermouth-whatever I can lay my shaking hands on.

That's the way I remember them, heading for an exit.

Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house.

For lovers, touch is metamorphosis. All the parts of their bodies seem to change, and they seem to become something different and better.

I write to make sense of my life." -John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey