Richard Yates

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

— Richard Yates

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

— Richard Yates

“Some things you did were worth regretting; others not.”

— Richard Yates

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

— Richard Yates

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

— Richard Yates

Are artists and writers the only people entitled to lives of their own?

— Richard Yates

“And they fell asleep like children.”

— Richard Yates

“Well, your mother has her own way of dealing with information.”

— Richard Yates

They say that we are better educated than our parents' generation. What they mean is that we go to school longer. It…

— Richard Yates

Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.

— Richard Yates

“How can you talk that way? Frank, has it gotten so bad that you've lost all your belief in yourself?”

— Richard Yates

“Oh-h-h-h— Hidey, tidey, Christ Almighty Who the hell are we? Flim, flam, God damn We’re the infantry…”

— Richard Yates

“I know I had it - I could feel it, the way you feel blood in your veins - and now I…

— Richard Yates

Hard work, is the best medicine yet devised for all the ills of man- and of woman.

— Richard Yates

Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability…

— Richard Yates

He couldn't even tell whether he was angry or contrite, whether it was forgiveness he wanted or the power to forgive.

— Richard Yates

“I don't think about growing old," she said. "I know you don't. That's one of the things I admire about you, Alice.…

— Richard Yates

“He could even be grateful in a sense that he had no particular area of interest: in avoiding specific goals he had…

— Richard Yates

You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then…

— Richard Yates

“The hell with this aching, suffering, callow, half-assed delusion that he was in "love" with her. The hell with "love" anyway, and…

— Richard Yates

“As an intense, nicotine-stained, Jean-Paul Sartre sort of man, wasn't it simple logic to expect that he'd be limited to intense, nicotine-stained…

— Richard Yates

“He's been living on the fringes of art for so many years, talking and talking about it, that he's come to expect…

— Richard Yates

“She bought a chocolate bar and it tasted surprisingly good - as if, without her knowing it, sitting here and eating this…

— Richard Yates

“And maybe things like this really did get better of their own accord, if you gave them time; maybe all you could…

— Richard Yates

“He had proved nothing, he had made no viable gesture of atonement, and he knew now that he probably never would. If…

— Richard Yates

“my first wife passed away in the spring of—” and for a moment he is touched with terror. The spring of what?…

— Richard Yates

She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents nor Aunt Claire nor Frank…

— Richard Yates

It haunted him all night, while he slept alone; it was still there in the morning, when he swallowed his coffee and…

— Richard Yates

“You see? I don’t know what ‘mature’ means, either, and you could talk all night and I still wouldn’t know. It’s all…

— Richard Yates

“The whole point of crying was to quit before you cornied it up. The whole point of grief itself was to cut…

— Richard Yates

“There she was, lying on a single bed in a room so small that there wasn't even space for a chair, and…

— Richard Yates

“The hell with reality! Let's have a whole bunch of cute little winding roads and cute little houses painted white and pink…

— Richard Yates

“In the East, he then believed, a man went to college not for vocational training but in disciplined search for wisdom and…

— Richard Yates

“i mean talk about decadence," he declared, "how decadent can a society get? Look at it this way. This country's probably the…

— Richard Yates

“Wasn’t it true, then, that everything in his life from that point on had been a succession of things he hadn’t really…

— Richard Yates

“I need a job; okay. Is that any reason why the job I get has to louse me up? Look. All I…

— Richard Yates

“He found it so easy and so pleasant to cry that he didn't try to stop for a while, until he realized…

— Richard Yates

“I want to retain my own identity. Therefore the thing I’m most anxious to avoid is any kind of work that can…

— Richard Yates

“It had been easy to decide in favor of love on Bethune Street, in favor of walking proud and naked on the…

— Richard Yates

“How small and neat and comically serious the other men looked, with their grey-flecked crew cuts and their button-down collars and their…

— Richard Yates