Who said “Strange and predatory and truly dangerous, car thieves and muggers -- they seem to…”?

Verified

John Cheever. A published source records them saying or writing it.

SourceThe Late Forties and the Fifties, 1955 entry.

Evidence: Wikiquote · How we check

Source checked · Something wrong? Report a correction

Authors A–Z
“Strange and predatory and truly dangerous, car thieves and muggers -- they seem to jeopardize all our cherished concepts, even our self-esteem, our property rights, our powers of love, our laws and pleasures. The only relationship we seem to have with them is scorn or bewilderment, but they belong somewhere on the dark prairies of a country that is in the throes of self-discovery.”
— John Cheever
VerifiedThe Late Forties and the Fifties, 1955 entry. · evidenceDelinquency

Cite this quote

For academic work, cite the original where you can: The Late Forties and the Fifties, 1955 entry..

APA

Cheever, J. (n.d.). Strange and predatory and truly dangerous, car thieves and muggers -- they seem to jeopardize all our cherished concepts, even our self-esteem, our property rights, our powers of love, our laws and pleasures. The only relationship we seem to have with them is scorn or bewilderment, but they belong somewhere on the dark prairies of a country that is in the throes of self-discovery. [Quotation]. Famous Quotations Network. Retrieved October 24, 2026, from https://www.famous-quotations.com/quotes/12532-strange-and-predatory-and-truly-dangerous-car-thieves/

MLA

Cheever, John. “Strange and predatory and truly dangerous, car thieves and muggers -- they seem to jeopardize all our cherished concepts, even our self-esteem, our property rights, our powers of love, our laws and pleasures. The only relationship we seem to have with them is scorn or bewilderment, but they belong somewhere on the dark prairies of a country that is in the throes of self-discovery.” Famous Quotations Network, https://www.famous-quotations.com/quotes/12532-strange-and-predatory-and-truly-dangerous-car-thieves/. Accessed 24 Oct. 2026.

Chicago

Cheever, John. “Strange and predatory and truly dangerous, car thieves and muggers -- they seem to jeopardize all our cherished concepts, even our self-esteem, our property rights, our powers of love, our laws and pleasures. The only relationship we seem to have with them is scorn or bewilderment, but they belong somewhere on the dark prairies of a country that is in the throes of self-discovery.” Famous Quotations Network. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.famous-quotations.com/quotes/12532-strange-and-predatory-and-truly-dangerous-car-thieves/.

Related quotes

“There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of folly, they will invent ten thousand others. They will create subtler, wilder methods, methods that are absolutely DESPERATE. Nature herself is fundamentally antisocial, it is only by a usurpation of powers that the organized body of society opposes the natural inclination of humanity.”
— Antonin Artaud
VerifiedGeneral Security: The Liquidation of Opium (1925) · evidenceDetails & citeDelinquency
“Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy.”
— Anthony Burgess
Delinquency
“Now, neighbor confines, purge you of your scum! Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance, revel the night, rob, murder, and commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways?”
— William Shakespeare
Delinquency

More quotes by John Cheever

“Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil -- not the strength to choose between the two.”
VerifiedThe Late Forties and the Fifties, 1956 entry. · evidenceDetails & citeWisdom
“My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am as bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats.”
VerifiedLetter to Philip Roth (May 10, 1982); The Letters of John Cheever (1989). · evidenceDetails & citeCancer
“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.”
VerifiedThe Sixties, 1966 entry. · evidenceDetails & citeLoneliness
“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.”
VerifiedThe Sixties, 1963 entry. · evidenceDetails & citeFallibility
“The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.”
VerifiedThe Sixties, 1963 entry. · evidenceDetails & citeWriters and Writing
All 9 John Cheever quotes →