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The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.

— John Cheever The Journals of John Cheever (1991)

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More quotes by John Cheever

Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil not the strength to choose between the two.

The Journals of John Cheever (1991)

I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.

The Journals of John Cheever (1991)

All literary men are Red Sox fans—to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.

The Journals of John Cheever (1991)

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

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Cheever (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.