John Cheever Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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My parents were self-made people, and they were a team.
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As a kid, my parents had the typical stuff going on in the home, like Bee Gees, The Carpenters. Then I got exposed to what my brothers were listening to: a lot of classic rock, Led Zeppelin. It was around the mid-'80s when the whole Electro-Techno-Pop-House music thing started happening in Chicago.
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Any woman who wishes to smash into the world of men isn't very feminine.
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Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, I have failed three times, and what happens when he says, I am a failure.
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Age is just a number. If someone can perform at 45, who will stop that fellow from playing top-level cricket?
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I tend to make low-budget movies but, yeah, I make more money than I ever thought I would make.
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Slow travel now rivals the fly-to-Barcelona-for-lunch culture. Advocates savour the journey, travelling by train or boat or bicycle, or even on foot, rather than crammed into an airplane. They take time to plug into the local culture instead of racing through a list of tourist traps.
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One of the exciting things about reporting is going to places you've never been to before.
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I run a solid 4-6 miles at a time, and over the last year two years I've gotten really into SoulCycle. It's sort of an evolved form of spinning.
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The final phone call that said we're going to be picked up again was just a miracle. We've overcome the impossible and we're still pushing forward. I know John is smiling and so happy that he gets to watch us on TV.
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When you make as many speeches and you talk as much as I do and you get away from the text, it's always a possibility to get a few words tangled here and there.
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The things I learned from the army - and I think it was a lesson for life - was how to work in unison with other people. How to take responsibility.
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I took Latin and Spanish. I can speak a very small amount of Spanish, but Latin has sort of gone away! Unless I was joining the Catholic Church, there would be no need to learn Latin.
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As straight Americans we have two choices: we can choose to sit back and enjoy our rights as we have them, or we can realize that it is actually not freedom at all when our friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues do not share these basic rights.
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When I was a kid, we got in a cipher and battled each other lyrically. We told jokes and made the hottest dance moves.
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Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own.
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I do secret stand-up shows around New York. I announce and tweet this to nobody - I get onstage and I do a quick five minutes.
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There's no substitute for the practice of meditation.
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I genuinely want to do my best every day, and I genuinely want to enjoy life every day.
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He was at his best only when the going was good.
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Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.
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My current motto is to go for it, whatever it is that inspires you.
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To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'
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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.
