What I am going to write is the last of what I have to say. I will say that literature is the only consciousness we possess and that its role as consciousness must inform us of our ability to comprehend the hideous danger of nuclear power.
John Cheever

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

Wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.
John Cheever

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

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.
John Cheever

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

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