Journals John Cheever Quotes

To write well, to write passionately, to be less inhibited, to be warmer, to be more self-critical, to recognize the power of as well as the force of lust, to write, to love.

I know some people who are afraid to write a business letter because they will encounter and reveal themselves.

I am like a prisoner who is trying to escape from jail by the wrong route. For all one knows, that door may stand open, although I continue to dig a tunnel with a teaspoon.

In middle age there is mystery, there is mystification. The most I can make out of this hour is a kind of loneliness. Even the beauty of the visible world seems to crumble, yes even love. I feel that there has been some miscarriage, some wrong turning, but I do not know when it took place and I have no hope of finding it.

we obscure our self-knowledge with anxiety; that it is not what we desire but what we fear and dread we may desire that impedes us.

He saw the role of the serious writer as both lofty and practical in the same instant. He used to say that literature was one of the first indications of civilization. He used to say that a fine piece of prose could not only cure a depression, it could clear up a sinus headache. Like many great healers, he meant to heal himself.

since these are hours and days out of one’s life, can there be any other course but to look back into them, even though at times they seem like waste?

As I approach my fortieth birthday without having accomplished any one of the things I intended to accomplish—without ever having achieved the deep creativity that I have worked toward for all this time—I feel that I take a minor, an obscure, a dim position that is not my destiny but that is my fault, as if I had lacked, somewhere along the line, the wit and courage to contain myself competently within the shapes at hand.

And walking back from the river I remember the galling loneliness of my adolescence, from which I do not seem to have completely escaped. It is the sense of the voyeur, the lonely, lonely boy with no role in life but to peer in at the lighted windows of other people’s contentment and vitality. It seems comical -- farcical -- that, having been treated so generously, I should be struck with this image of a kid in the rain walking along the road shoulders of East Milton.

La cosa più meravigliosa della vita sembra essere che alla fine usiamo solo una parte infinetisimale del nostro potenziale autodistruttivo. Magari lo desideriamo, magari è ciò che sogniamo, ma basta un raggio di luce, un cambio del vento per dissuaderci.

Su un tram affollato a Roma all'ora di chiusura una sera d'inverno, qualcuno per sbaglio mi tocca la spalla. Non mi giro a guardare chi è e non saprò mai se è un uomo o una donna, una sgualdrina o un prete, ma quel tocco delicato scatena in me un tale desiderio di tenerezza e di cura che sospiro; mi sento cedere le ginocchia. Non è un sospiro profumato di violette né uno spasimo chopinesco: è qualcosa di rozzo e reale come i peli sulla mia pancia

I dream that someone in space says to me: So let us rush, then, to see the world. It is shaped like an egg, covered with seas and continents, warmed and lighted by the sun. It has churches of indescribable beauty, raised to gods that have never been seen; cities whose distant roofs and smokestacks will make your heart leap; ballparks and comfortable auditoriums in which people listen to music of the most serious import; to celebrate life is recorded. Here the joy of women’s breasts and backsides, the colors of water, the shapes of trees, athletes, dreams, houses, the shapes of ecstasy and dismay, the shape even of an old shoe, are celebrated. Let us rush to see the world. They serve steak there on jet planes, and dance at sea. They have invented musical instruments to express love, peaceableness; to stir the finest memories and aspirations. They have invented games to catch the hearts of young men. They have ceremonies to exalt the love of men and women. They make their vows to music and the sound of bells. They have invented ways to heat their houses in the winter and cool them in the summer. They have even invented engines to cut their grass. They have free schools for the pursuit of knowledge, pools to swim in, zoos, vast manufactories of all kinds. They explore space and the trenches of the sea. Oh, let us rush to see this world.

Forse è la vita chiusa che facciamo qui, e la noia in cui ci imbattiamo quando cerchiamo di variarla. Queste abitudini, questi giorni come vestiti vecchi. Ieri un giorno di luce brillante, di brillantezza acustica: il tintinnio di ruote di treni lontani sui binari risuonava netto. Dolori da sinusite. Ho portato Ben in macchina sulla collina a vedere il tramonto, il buio terso, le colline, le luci lontane, le nuvole tinte, il cielo color lavanda e limone.

I’ll say goodbye with something that another of my favorite writers, John Cheever, said in his journal at the end of his life: ‘I will say that literature is the only consciousness we possess, and that its role as a consciousness must inform us of our inability to comprehend the hideous danger of nuclear power.