If my hands tremble with desire, they tremble likewise when I reach for the chalice on Sunday, and if lust makes me run and caper, it is no stronger a force than that which brings me to my knees to say thanksgivings and litanies. What can this capricious skin be but a blessing?

—John Cheever

desire trembling lust

About John Cheever

Portrait of John Cheever

John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American short story writer and novelist. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; the Westchester suburbs; old New England villages based on various South...

More quotations from John Cheever

Art is the triumph over chaos.

—John Cheever

We praise Him, we bless Him, we adore Him, we glorify Him, and we wonder who is that baritone across the aisle and that pretty woman on our right who smells of apple blossoms.… We amend our prayers for the spiritual life with the hope that it will not be too spiritual.

—John Cheever

I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.

—John Cheever

More quotations tagged with “desire”

The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give.

—Walt Whitman

giving desire habit

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

—W. Somerset Maugham

writing art desire

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.

—Leonardo da Vinci

memory desire nothing study

When you really want something, you will find a way. When you don't really want something, you'll find an excuse.

—Rachel Hollis in Wash Your Face

will desire excuses

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

—G. K. Chesterton

desire trying Christian

History

3 Aug 2013 Added