“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

The Sixties, 1963 entry.
The Journals of John Cheever (1991)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a win…" by John Cheever?

John Cheever 36

American novelist and short story writer 1912–1982

Related quotes

“The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it; anything more than that is advertising.”

Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist

Source: The Word and the Bomb

“I have reached your country, therefore, with no misgivings, but with my belief that the American people are building and carrying out a true pattern of the nation conceived by your forebears, strengthened and confirmed.”

Soong Mei-ling (1897–2003) Chiang Kai-shek's wife, First Lady of the Republic of China

Address to the U.S. House of Representatives (February 18, 1943)

“It was the way the autumn day looked into the high windows as it waned; the way the red light, breaking at the close from under a low sombre sky, reached out in a long shaft and played over old wainscots, old tapestry, old gold, old colour.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

“She was an extremely attractive woman if you like the type, which could best be described as homicidal schizophrenic paranoiac with kittenish overtones.”

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) American writer

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 5 (p. 45)

“Certain Socialist writers are fond of describing the Social-Democratic State of the future as implying the "emancipation of the proletarian and the woman." As regards the latter point, however, if emancipation is taken to include domination, we have not to wait so long. The highest development of modern capitalism, as exemplified in the English-speaking countries, has placed man to all intents and purposes, legally under the heel of woman. So far as the relations of the sexes are concerned, it would be the task of Socialism to emancipate man from this position, if sex-equality be the goal aimed at. The first step on the road towards such equality would necessarily consist in the abolition of modern female privilege.”

Ernest Belfort Bax (1854–1926) British barrister and journalist

Chapter 12: Socialists and Feminists http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Legal_Subjection_of_Men#Socialists_And_Feminists
The Legal Subjection of Men (1908)

“You speak of Lord Byron and me; there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

“Swing and a fly ball to right, Green under it….. in foul ground.. makes the catch!…Put it in the books!.. The Mets are gonna play for the pennant!”

Howie Rose (1954) American sports announcer

Calling the 2006 NLDS clincher.
2006

“What no wife of a writer can ever understand, no matter if she lives with him for twenty years, is that a writer is working when he's staring out the window.”

Burton Rascoe (1892–1957) American writer

Quoted by Bennett Cerf in Shake Well Before Using http://books.google.com/books?id=gVZAAAAAIAAJ&q=%22What+no+wife+of+a+writer+can+ever+understand+no+matter+if+she+lives+with+him+for+twenty+years+is+that+a+writer+is+working+when+he%27s+staring+out+the+window%22&pg=PA118#v=onepage (1948)

“And she actually looks—well, I’m not sure how to describe her. Scary is such an inadequate word, don’t you think?”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 11, “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” (p. 197)

“in the dark you have to describe yourself. In the daylight other people describe you.”

Fynn (1919–1999) British writer

Source: Mister God, This is Anna

“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.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Cheever 36

Related quotes

Related topics