“Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.”

“Our country is the best country in the world. We are swimming in prosperity and our President is the best president in the world. We have larger apples and better cotton and faster and more beautif...”

“I dream that someone in space says to me: So let us rush, then, to see the world. It is shaped like an egg, covered with seas and continents, warmed and lighted by the sun. It has churches of indes...”

“I write to make sense of my life."-John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey”

“Like all bitter men, Flint knew less than half the story and was more interested in unloading his own peppery feelings than in learning the truth.”

“For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed...”

“Nostalgia can be more painful than a surgeon's knife.”

“...good words - that triumphalism of positivity- but life will claw and eat you - chew you over and over - if you carry such a small knife ...”

“Sometimes I wished I could cut away old memories and let the wind take them. If a sharp knife could pare away the weakness of those days, I would slice until nothing but the hard lessons remained.”

“I love you butdon't know what todo.”

“It's like I'm reading a book, andit's a book I deeply love, but I'mreading it slowly now so the wordsare really far apart and the spacesbetween the words are almostinfinite. I can still feel you an...”

“The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”

“I dont want any of this. I just want to be what I was before you showed up here and all hell broke loose. I want to be popular and dating the hottest guy in school. Now Im none of those things, and...”

“The prisoners of the cultures are mostly the women! House is the name of the prison!”

“Our own place is mall perhaps, but when your old man is eaten by his own shadow, you realise that maybe in every house, something so savage and sad and brilliant is standing up, without the world e...”