Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
When the beginnings of self destruction enter the heart, it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.
How can we describe the most exalted experience of our physical lives [sex], as if-jack, wrench, hubcap, and nuts-we were describing the changing of a flat tire?
Children drown, beautiful women are mangled in automobile accidents, cruise ships founder, and men die lingering deaths in mines and submarines, but you will find none of this in my accounts.
It is not, as somebody once wrote, the smell of corn bread that calls us back from death; it is the lights and signs of love and friendship.
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.
I write to make sense of my life. " -John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey
A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.
I'll tell you my routine - it's really exciting. I feed, I burp, I change diapers, I pump. And then I have a tiny window of time to myself.
I was trying to do like a spaghetti western but using World War II iconography.
A day doesn't go by when I don't get a compliment on L. A. Confidential, for example.