Peter De Vries Quotes

Quotes about:

• I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.

  Peter De Vries

  Life, Morning, Inspiration

  51 Copy quote

• Life is a zoo in a jungle.

  Peter De Vries

  Life, Zoos, Bad Day

  Peter De Vries (2014). “The Vale of Laughter: A Novel”, p.86, Open Road Media

  57 Copy quote

• The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.

  Peter De Vries

  Love, Marriage, Wedding

  45 Copy quote

• The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.

  Peter De Vries

  Inspirational, Marriage, Children

  Tunnel of Love (1954) ch. 8

  30 Copy quote

• A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.

  Peter De Vries

  Funny, Mothers Day, Mom

  23 Copy quote

• It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.

  Peter De Vries

  God, Fear, Order

  Mackerel Plaza ch. 1 (1958)

  52 Copy quote

• Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.

  Peter De Vries

  Inspirational, Motivational, Food

  Comfort Me with Apples Ch. 15

  95 Copy quote

• The idea of a Supreme Being who creates a world in which one creature is designed to eat another in order to subsist, and then pass a law saying, "Thou shalt not kill," is so monstrously, immeasurably, bottomlessly absurd that I am at a loss to understand how mankind has entertained or given it house room all this long.

  Peter De Vries

  Loss, Order, Law

  11 Copy quote

• I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

  Peter De Vries

  Work, Writing, Written Word

  86 Copy quote

• The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.

  Peter De Vries

  Nature, Science, World

  Peter De Vries (2014). “Let Me Count the Ways: A Novel”, p.192, Open Road Media

  12 Copy quote

• We are not primarily put on this earth to see through one another, but to see one another through.

  Peter De Vries

  Sports, Earth, Cooperation

  Peter De Vries (2014). “Let Me Count the Ways: A Novel”, p.177, Open Road Media

  7 Copy quote

• Let us hope, I prayed, that a kind Providence will put a speedy end to the acts of God under which we have been laboring.

  Peter De Vries

  God, Kind, Ends

  Peter De Vries (2014). “The Mackerel Plaza: A Novel”, p.21, Open Road Media

  7 Copy quote

• A hundred years ago Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter was given an A for adultery; today she would rate no better than a C-plus.

  Peter De Vries

  Years, Letters, Today

  Peter De Vries (2014). “Reuben, Reuben: A Novel”, p.150, University of Chicago Press

  29 Copy quote

• We must love one another, yes, yes, that's all true enough, but nothing says we have to like each other.

  Peter De Vries

  True Love, Enmity, Love One Another

  13 Copy quote

• When I see a paragraph shrinking under my eyes like a strip of bacon in a skillet, I know I'm on the right track.

  Peter De Vries

  Eye, Track, Shrinking

  22 Copy quote

• There are times when breakfast seems the one thing worth getting up for.

  Peter De Vries

  Morning, Breakfast, Seems

  Peter De Vries (1982). “Forever panting”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  24 Copy quote

• What people believe is a measure of what they suffer.

  Peter De Vries

  Believe, People, Suffering

  Peter De Vries (2012). “The Blood of the Lamb: A Novel”, p.25, University of Chicago Press

  5 Copy quote

• Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk. But you have to have both elements in creation — the Apollonian and the Dionysian, or spontaneity and restraint, emotion and discipline.

  Peter De Vries

  Writing, Discipline, Drunk

  Peter De Vries (2014). “Reuben, Reuben: A Novel”, p.242, University of Chicago Press

  20 Copy quote

• The rich aren't like us, they pay less taxes.

  Peter De Vries

  Business, Pay, Finance

  8 Copy quote

• How do you expect mankind to be happy in pairs when it is miserable separately?

  Peter De Vries

  Pairs, Miserable, Mankind

  Peter De Vries (2014). “Reuben, Reuben: A Novel”, p.313, University of Chicago Press

  7 Copy quote

• There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you.

  Peter De Vries

  Family, Children, Humorous

  9 Copy quote

• A politician is a man who can be verbose in fewer words than anyone else.

  Peter De Vries

  Men, Politics, Politician

  5 Copy quote

• "You ought to be ashamed," a woman in an Easter bonnet told Stein. "Your race gave us our religion..." "From ancient polytheism, the belief in lots of gods," the woman continued a little more eruditely, "the Hebrew nation led us on to the idea that there is only one." "Which is just a step from the truth," said Stein.

  Peter De Vries

  Easter, Race, Ideas

  Peter De Vries (2012). “The Blood of the Lamb: A Novel”, p.207, University of Chicago Press

  7 Copy quote

• What baffles me is the comfort people find in the idea that somebody dealt this mess. Blind and meaningless chance seems to me so much more congenial - or at least less horrible. Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair.

  Peter De Vries

  Ideas, People, Despair

  9 Copy quote

• Everybody hates me because I'm so universally liked.

  Peter De Vries

  Hate, Hate Me

  Peter De Vries (1967). “The vale of laughter”

  11 Copy quote

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