John Cheever

“Fiction is not a dream. Nor is it an argument. It is a means of possessing the world.”

“The constants that I look for in this life are gravity, tide, forgiveness, and love.”

“To be an American and unable to play baseball is comparable to being a Polynesian and unable to swim.”

“I lie, in order to tell the truth.”

“Art is the triumph over chaos.”

“I write to make sense of my life.”

“The main thing is to write for the joy of it.”

“A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick.”

“The task of the artist is to make the human condition memorable.”

“Literature is the memory of humanity.”

“Good writers are not those who say what they mean, but those who mean what they say.”

“My life, I feel, is a series of embarrassing incidents.”

“I've been homesick for countries I've never been to.”

“The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.”

“All literary men are Red Sox fans; to be a Yankee fan is to be ignorant of the history of baseball.”