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Only the opium eater truly understands the pain of death.

John Cheever

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John Cheever
Age: 70 †
Born: 1912
Born: May 27
Died: 1982
Died: June 18
Diarist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Quincy
Massachusetts
John William Cheever
Eater
Opium
Understands
Truly
Pain
Death

More quotes by John Cheever

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Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil - not the strength to choose between the two.
John Cheever
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I write to make sense of my life. -John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey
John Cheever
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Art is the triumph over chaos.
John Cheever
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I love you not for the person you are, but for your possibilities.
John Cheever
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That's the way I remember them, heading for an exit.
John Cheever
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Sometimes the easiest-seeming stories to a reader are the hardest kind to write.
John Cheever
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The short story is the literature of the nomad.
John Cheever
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Love with its paraphernalia of sexuality, jealousy, nostalgia and exaltation was easier to reognize than friendship, which seemed to have (excepting athletic equipment) no paraphernalia at all.
John Cheever
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Novels are about men and women and children and dogs, not politics.
John Cheever
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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.
John Cheever
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We praise Him, we bless Him, we adore Him, we glorify Him, and we wonder who is that baritone across the aisle and that pretty woman on our right who smells of apple blossoms. Our bowels stir and our cod itches and we amend our prayers for the spiritual life with the hope that it will not be too spiritual.
John Cheever
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The world that was not mine yesterday now lies spread out at my feet, a splendor. I seem, in the middle of the night, to have returned to the world of apples, the orchards of Heaven. Perhaps I should take my problems to a shrink, or perhaps I should enjoy the apples that I have, streaked with color like the evening sky.
John Cheever
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There isn't a king or a merchant prince in the whole world that I envy, for I always knew I was born to be a child of destiny and that I was never meant to wring my living from detestable, low, degrading, mean and ordinary kinds of business.
John Cheever
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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
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The writer cultivates, extends, raises and inflates his imagination, sure that this is his destiny, his usefulness, his contribution to the understanding of good and evil. As he inflates his imagination he inflates his capacity for evil.
John Cheever
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The poet or storyteller who feels that he is competing with a superb double play in the World Series is a lost man. One would not want as a reader a man who did not appreciate the finesse of a double play.
John Cheever
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Falsehood is a critical element in fiction. Part of the thrill of being told a story is the chance of being hoodwinked. . .The telling of lies is a sort of sleight of hand that displays our deepest feelings about life.
John Cheever
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A page of good prose remains invincible.
John Cheever
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Homesickness is nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time.
John Cheever
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The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.
John Cheever