The organizations of men, like men themselves, seem subject to deafness, near-sightedness, lameness, and involuntary cruelty. We seem tragically unable to help one another, to understand one another. – John Cheever
For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty. – John Cheever
Homesickness is nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time. – 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
The weathercocks on spires and housetops were mysterious with hints of stormy wind, and pointed, like so many ghostly fingers, out to dangerous seas, where fragments of great wrecks were drifting, perhaps, and helpless men were rocked upon them into a sleep as deep as the unfathomable waters. – Charles Dickens, Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son