Falsehood is a critical element in fiction. Part of the thrill of being told a story is the chance of being hoodwinked.… — John Cheever Copy Share Image
A collection of short stories is generally thought to be a horrendous clinker; an enforced courtesy for the elderly writer who wants… — John Cheever Copy Share Image
These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with… — John Cheever Copy Share Image
Sometimes the easiest-seeming stories to a reader are the hardest kind to write. — John Cheever Copy Share Image
Who reads short stories? one is asked, and I like to think that they are read by men and women in the… — John Cheever Copy Share Image
Fiction must compete with first-rate reporting. If you cannot write a story that is equal to a factual account of battle in… — John Cheever Copy Share Image
The poet or storyteller who feels that he is competing with a superb double play in the World Series is a lost man. One… — John Cheever Copy Share Image
“She perceived vaguely the pitiful corruption of the adult world; how cruel and frail it was, like a worn piece of burlap, patched with… — John Cheever Copy Share Image
For lovers, touch is metamorphosis. All the parts of their bodies seem to change, and they seem to become something different and better. — John Cheever Copy Share Image
“I dream that someone in space says to me: So let us rush, then, to see the world. It is shaped like an egg,… — John Cheever Copy Share Image
I don't like to see all my energies, all of my youth, wasted in fur coats and radios and slipcovers. — John Cheever Copy Share Image
Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the… — John Cheever Copy Share Image
At my back I hear the word-"homosexual"-and it seems to split my world in two.... It is ignorance, our ignorance of one another, that… — John Cheever Copy Share Image
One would never have guessed that the world had such a capacity for genuine grief. The most we can do is exploit our memories… — John Cheever Copy Share Image
“His stepmother -wearing a nightgown for comfort and a flowered hat for looks- had spent her days sitting in their parlor window in Baltimore… — John Cheever Copy Share Image
Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house. Courage tastes of blood. Stand up straight. Admire the world.… — John Cheever Copy Share Image
