“Proving, proving; and for no other reason than that he was married to a woman who had somehow managed to put him forever on the defensive, who loved him when he was nice, who lived according to what she happened… — Richard Yates Copy Share
“Wasn’t it true, then, that everything in his life from that point on had been a succession of things he hadn’t really wanted to do? Taking a hopelessly dull job to prove he could be as responsible as any other… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“Rachel was a girl who depended on small, recurrent rituals - that was one of the things he'd come to know about her, and… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“In the East, he then believed, a man went to college not for vocational training but in disciplined search for wisdom and beauty, and nobody over the age of twelve believed that those words were for sissies. In the East, wearing rumpled tweeds and flannels, he could have strolled for hours among ancient elms and clock towers, talking with his… — Richard Yates Copy Share
God knows there certainly ought to be a window around here somewhere, for all of us. — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“And you know what else I used to love? I loved to watch you get into your car and drive away - just because… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
if you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“The movies were wonderful because they took you out of yourself, and at the same time they gave you a sense of being whole. Things of the world might serve to remind you at every turn that your life was snarled and perilously incomplete, that terror would never be far from possession of your heart, but those perceptions would nearly… — Richard Yates Copy Share
Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love. — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“It had been easy to decide in favor of love on Bethune Street, in favor of walking proud and naked on the grass rug of an apartment that caught the morning sun among its makeshift chairs, its French travel posters and its bookcase made of packing-crate slats—an apartment where half the fun of having an affair was that it was… — Richard Yates Copy Share
Anybody's marriage might benefit from an occasional embargo on talk. — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“Sometimes in dreams there are visions of the past. For that reason Alice Prentice had always welcomed sleep, but she suffered an insomniac's dread of the time just before sleeping, the act of falling asleep itself, the perilous twilight of semi-awareness when the mind must struggle for coherence, when a siren or a cry in the street is the very… — Richard Yates Copy Share
“There she was, lying on a single bed in a room so small that there wasn't even space for a chair, and the first thing that struck him was that she was beautiful. She had lost too much weight - her long legs were too thin in greasy jeans and her upper body looked as frail as a bird's under… — Richard Yates Copy Share
