The novel remains for me one of the few forms...where we can describe, step by step, minute by minute, our not altogether unpleasant struggle to put ourselves into a viable and devout relationship to our beloved and mistaken world. - John Cheever
Her hair was dyed, and her bloom was fading, and she must have been crowding forty, but she seemed to be one of those women who cling to the manners and graces of a pretty child of eight. - John Cheever
Like all bitter men, Flint knew less than half the story and was more interested in unloading his own peppery feelings than in learning the truth. - John Cheever
I write to make sense of my life."-, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey - John Cheever
Fiction is meant to illuminate, to explode, to refresh. - John Cheever
Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream. - John Cheever
Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction. - John Cheever
I do not understand the capricious lewdness of a sleeping mind. - John Cheever