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For these are not as they might seem to be, the ruins of our civilization, but are temporary encampment and outposts of the civilization that we - you and I - shall build.

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
Civilization
Seem
Shall
Seems
Encampment
Might
Outposts
Temporary
Ruins
Build

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I was here on earth because I chose to be.
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Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil - not the strength to choose between the two.
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The main emotion of the adult American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.
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Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego.
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There is a terrible sameness to the euphoria of alcohol and the euphoria of metaphor.
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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.
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The irony of Christmas is always upon the poor in heart the mystery of the solstice is always upon the rest of us.
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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.
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Novels are about men and women and children and dogs, not politics.
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Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house. Courage tastes of blood. Stand up straight. Admire the world. Relish the love of a gentle woman.
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The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable.
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A page of good prose remains invincible.
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The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man's complexity and the strength and decency of his longings.
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I dream that my face appears on a postage stamp.
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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.
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A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey's gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind.
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Avoid kneeling in unheated stone churches. Ecclesiastical dampness causes prematurely grey hair.
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To be an American and unable to play baseball is comparable to being a Polynesian and unable to swim.
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Art is the triumph over chaos.
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Then it is dark it is a night where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountains.
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