"I sometimes go back to walk through the ghostly remains of Sutton Place where the rude, new buildings stand squarely in one another’s river views."

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More by John Cheever

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

“Homesickness is nothing … Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time.”

“One would never have guessed that the world had such a capacity for genuine grief. The most we can do is exploit our memories of his excellence.”

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

“My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am as bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats.”

“When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places. That’s the way I remember them, heading for an exit.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Earth hath no sorrows that earth cannot heal, or heaven cannot heal, for the earth as seen in the clean wilds of the mountains is about as divine as anything the heart of man can conceive!"

— John Muir

Philosophy1838–1914

#nature

"She half expected, despite her brave words, to come out upon the storied and familiar red-hot pave of hell, and this pleasant, starlit land surprised her and made her wary. The things that built the t…"

— C. L. Moore

Literature1911–1987

#nature

"...the Jews will gather from all parts of the world into occupied Palestine, not in order to bring about the anti-Christ and the end of the world, but rather that Allah the Glorified and Most High wan…"

— חסן נסראללה

#art

"Libertarianism is a people's movement and a liberation movement. It seeks the sort of open, non-coercive society in which the people, the living, free, distinct people may voluntarily associate, dis-…"

— Karl Hess

Literature1923–1994

#freedom