Susan Cheever Quotes

“Addiction isn't about substance - you aren't addicted to the substance, you are addicted to the alteration of mood that the substance brings.”

— Susan Cheever

“Falling in love as we know it is an addictive experience.”

— Susan Cheever

When women are angry at men, they call them heartless. When men are angry at women, they call them crazy. Sometimes it doesn't stop there.

— Susan Cheever

“Whenever there was a crisis, I found a man to help me take the edge off the feelings of helplessness and pain.”

— Susan Cheever

“The program of A.A., as written by Bill Wilson and Dr. Smith, only has one purpose: to get you sober. That's it. To make you a better person, forget it. That was one of the things he came to understand in those years of trial and error. It has to be about only one thing.”

— Susan Cheever

“A fierce literary woman with a penchant for married men, Margaret Fuller was ultimately torn between motherhood and her final career as a political reporter.”

— Susan Cheever

“Women's currency is their looks. Like it or not, the most powerful woman is an 18-year-old woman.”

— Susan Cheever

“There were a number of books about Bill Wilson, and by him, but a lot of the basic biographical tasks had not been done.”

— Susan Cheever

“I believe that the memoir is the novel of the 21st century; it's an amazing form that we haven't even begun to tap ... we're just getting started figuring out what the rules are.”

— Susan Cheever

“I think 12-step programs really work, rehab really works, certain types of therapies and talking to other addicts really work. There are a lot of things that work - that isn't the problem. The problem is getting the addicts to say they're addicts. The problem is admitting it.”

— Susan Cheever

“Dogs are great teachers. They are at home in the world. They live in the moment, and they force us to stay there with them. Dogs love us unconditionally, not for our bodies or bank accounts.”

— Susan Cheever

“Pregnancy is difficult for women but it is even more difficult for men.”

— Susan Cheever

Guilt is petty; I am above guilt.

— Susan Cheever

“Our [western] culture embraces sex addiction. If I drink too much or rack up credit-card debt or lose the rent in Vegas, that's bad. But if I have many lovers, that's good.”

— Susan Cheever

“There is no such thing as expecting too much.”

— Susan Cheever

“A wedding isn't for the bride and groom, it's for the family and friends. The B. and G. are just props, silly stick figures with no more significance than the pink and white candy figures on the top of the cake.”

— Susan Cheever

There is some consensus: There's obsession, there's never satiety, and there's always remorse. For me, the big thing is that you're always breaking a promise - for example, you promise yourself you're just going to have coffee with a man, then before you know it, you're in bed together.

— Susan Cheever

“The actual American childhood is less Norman Rockwell and Walt Disney than Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.”

— Susan Cheever

There is no other closeness in human life like the closeness between a mother and her baby - chronologically, physically, and spiritually they are just a few heartbeats away from being the same person.

— Susan Cheever

“If a woman is surrounded by lovers or if a woman has a lot of guys asking her out, that's considered wonderful. As a woman who's slept with a lot of men, I've always been complimented on my ability to attract men.”

— Susan Cheever

“The birth of a child is in many ways the end of a marriage - marriage including a child has to be reinvented, and reinvented at a time when both husband and wife are under unprecedented stress and the wife is exhausted, physically drained, and emotionally in shock. A man's conflict between wanting his child to have a mother and wanting to have the mother to himself is potentially intolerable.”

— Susan Cheever

“Obsession is so extreme and so hard to imagine with the rational mind that it has a science-fiction-like quality to it-it's almost as if the obsessed one has been taken over by a replica, a pod, a facsimile of the rational person.”

— Susan Cheever

“Writers often write their best when they are feeling their worst”

— Susan Cheever

“Death is terrifying because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time.”

— Susan Cheever

“Personal experience is the lightning of the soul; it transforms the heart in ways that leave the brain behind.”

— Susan Cheever

Love is a great wrecker of peace of mind.

— Susan Cheever

“When Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are alike, what he meant was that there are no happy families.”

— Susan Cheever