Richard Yates Quotes - Page 2

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• It haunted him all night, while he slept alone; it was still there in the morning, when he swallowed his coffee and backed down the driveway in the crumpled old Ford. And riding to work, one of the youngest and healthiest passengers on the train, he sat with the look of a man condemned to a very slow, painless death. He felt middle-aged.

  Richard Yates

  Morning, Coffee, Night

  Richard Yates (2010). “Revolutionary Road”, p.68, Random House

  11 Copy quote

• Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.

  Richard Yates

  Jobs, Home, Intelligent

  10 Copy quote

• The hell with "love" anyway, and with every other phony, time-wasting, half-assed emotion in the world.

  Richard Yates

  Half, World, Emotion

  8 Copy quote

• She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents nor Aunt Claire nor Frank nor anyone else had ever had to teach her: that if you wanted something to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.

  Richard Yates

  Aunt, Knowing, Parent

  9 Copy quote

• Acting might bring on emotional exhaustion, but writing tired your brains out. Writing led to depression and insomnia and walking around all day with a haggard look.

  Richard Yates

  Writing, Tired, Insomnia

  4 Copy quote

• Anybody's marriage might benefit from an occasional embargo on talk.

  Richard Yates

  Benefits, Might, Occasional

  7 Copy quote

• When you wrote it didn't matter if hysteria sometimes came up in your face and voice (unless, of course, you let it find its way into your "literary voice") because writing was done in merciful privacy and silence. Even if you were partly out of your mind it might turn out to be all right: you could try for control even harder than Blanche Dubois was said to have tried, and with luck you could still bring off a sense of order and sanity on the page for the reader. Reading, after all, was a thing done in privacy and silence too.

  Richard Yates

  Reading, Writing, Order

  Richard Yates (2010). “Young Hearts Crying”, p.184, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• Know what we did, Lucy? You and me? We spent our whole lives yearning. Isn't that the God damndest thing?

  Richard Yates

  Yearning, Whole Life, Knows

  Richard Yates (2010). “Young Hearts Crying”, p.154, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• Remember what Anatole France said about the dog masturbating on your leg--'Sure, it's honest, but who needs it?

  Richard Yates

  Dog, Needs, Legs

  4 Copy quote

• He took each fact as it came and let it slip painlessly into the back of his mind, thinking, Okay, okay, I'll think about that one later; and that one; and that one; so that the alert, front part of his mind could remain free enough to keep him in command of the situation.

  Richard Yates

  Thinking, Mind, Facts

  Richard Yates (2010). “Revolutionary Road”, p.149, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• There's never been anything funny about a woman dying for love.

  Richard Yates

  Dying

  7 Copy quote

• ...you found you were saying yes when you meant no, and “We’ve got to be together in this thing” when you meant the very opposite ... and then you were face to face, in total darkness, with the knowledge that you didn’t know who you were. And how could anyone else be blamed for that?

  Richard Yates

  Opposites, Found You, Darkness

  7 Copy quote

• Synchronize watches at oh six hundred' says the infantry captain, and each of his huddled lieutenants finds respite from fear in the act of bringing two tiny pointers into jeweled alignment while tons of heavy artillery go fluttering overhead: the prosaic, civilian-looking dial of the watch has restored, however briefly, an illusion of personal control. Good, it counsels, looking tidily up from the hairs and veins of each terribly vulnerable wrist; fine: so far, everything's happening right on time.

  Richard Yates

  Hair, Two, Watches

  Richard Yates (2010). “Revolutionary Road”, p.213, Random House

  9 Copy quote

• He found it so easy and so pleasant to cry that he didn’t try to stop for a while, until he realized he was forcing his sobs a little, exaggerating their depth with unnecessary shudders. … The whole point of crying is to quit before you coined it up. The whole point of grief itself was to cut it out while it was still honest, while it still meant something. Because the thing was so easily corrupted

  Richard Yates

  Grief, Cutting, Trying

  4 Copy quote

• God knows there certainly ought to be a window around here somewhere, for all of us.

  Richard Yates

  Window, God Knows, Ought

  Richard Yates (2014). “The Collected Stories of Richard Yates”, p.173, Henry Holt and Company

  4 Copy quote

• If you haven't written a novel by the time you're forty you never will!

  Richard Yates

  Novel, Forty, Havens

  4 Copy quote

• Every man has a right to keep his own sentiments if he pleases.

  Richard Yates

  Motivation, Men, Please

  4 Copy quote

• He knew it was possible for shame to be nursed and doctored like an illness, if you wanted to keep it separate from the rest of your life, but that didn't mean there'd be any way to keep from knowing it was there.

  Richard Yates

  Mean, Knowing, Nurse

  4 Copy quote

• In avoiding specific goals he had avoided specific limitations. For the time being the world, life itself, could be his chosen field.

  Richard Yates

  Goal, World, Fields

  10 Copy quote

• Warren Cox, God knew, was no prize; a commercial person, a sales person, the kind of man who said things like "x numbers of dollars". At lunch today, laboriously trying to explain some business procedure, he had said "x number of dollars" three times.

  Richard Yates

  Men, Sales Person, Lunch

  4 Copy quote

• He had won but he didn't feel like a winner.

  Richard Yates

  Winner, Feels

  Richard Yates (2010). “Revolutionary Road”, p.242, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• ...his job was the very least important part of his life, never to be mentioned except in irony.

  Richard Yates

  Jobs, Important, Irony

  Richard Yates (2010). “Revolutionary Road”, p.65, Random House

  4 Copy quote

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