"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 See all quotes by John Cheever →

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More by John Cheever

“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.”

“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.”

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Politics1945

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"In essence, leaders are people who "walk ahead," people genuinely committed to deep changes, in themselves and in their organizations."

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Literature1947

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"I grew up with a lot of discrimination and racism though we were in South Texas it was still very prevalent and I had to deal with a lot of it in the public school system. In the elementary school we …"

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Art1948

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