The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable.
John CheeverRead
A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey's gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote illustrates the deep sense of loneliness and despair experienced by an isolated individual.
John Cheever's quote paints a vivid picture of loneliness, likening a solitary man to inanimate objects like stones and sticks, emphasizing the emptiness and desolation felt in isolation. The imagery of a person sitting alone, burdened by sighs, evokes the profound emotional impact of being cut off from companionship and connection, suggesting that loneliness reduces a person to a mere shell of their former self.
Themes
LonelinessIsolationEmotional PainDespairRelationships
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can serve as a poignant reminder in a speech about mental health awareness.
More from John Cheever
All quotes →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 and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably.
John CheeverRead
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 CheeverRead
The world that was not mine yesterday now lies spread out at my feet, a splendor. I seem, in the middle of the night, to have returned to the world of apples, the orchards of Heaven. Perhaps I should take my problems to a shrink, or perhaps I should enjoy the apples that I have, streaked with color like the evening sky.
John CheeverRead
What I am going to write is the last of what I have to say. I will say that literature is the only consciousness we possess and that its role as consciousness must inform us of our ability to comprehend the hideous danger of nuclear power.
John CheeverRead
Art is the triumph over chaos.
John CheeverRead
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