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

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

— Richard Yates

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

— Richard Yates

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

— Richard Yates

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

— Richard Yates

“I grandi libri, come i grandi amici, devono essere condivisi.”

— Richard Yates

Never say anything that doesn't improve on silence.

— 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

“They think the way to be a poet is to wear funny clothes and write sideways on the page.”

— Richard Yates

“Not the prettiest girl in the world, maybe, but cute and quick and fun to have around.”

— Richard Yates

“Everything is selling. Nothing happens in this world, nothing comes into this world, until somebody makes a sale.”

— richard yates

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

— Richard Yates

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

— Richard Yates

“It’s the great sentimental lie of the suburbs, and I’ve been making you subscribe to it all this time.”

— Richard Yates

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

— Richard Yates

It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable…

— Richard Yates

“That’s how we both got committed to this enormous delusion—because that’s what it is, an enormous, obscene delusion—this idea that people have…

— Richard Yates

“He let the fingers of one hand splay out across the pocket of his shirt to show what a simple, physical thing…

— 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

He took each fact as it came and let it slip painlessly into the back of his mind, thinking, Okay, okay, I'll…

— Richard Yates

“Will you call me?" she asked helplessly. "Will you call me again, Evan?" "Well of course I will," he said, looking back…

— Richard Yates

“It always seemed to me," she said at last, "that it must require a great deal of courage to be an artist,…

— Richard Yates

“He watched her with murderous distaste as she fumbled with her spoon. They had ordered ice cream, and some of it clung…

— Richard Yates

“I don’t care if it takes you five years of doing nothing at all; I don’t care if you decide after five…

— Richard Yates

Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs…

— Richard Yates

“Now you’ve said it. The hopeless emptiness. Hell, plenty of people are on to the emptiness part; out where I used to…

— Richard Yates

“She cried because she'd had such high, high hopes about the Wheelers tonight and now she was terribly, terribly, terribly disappointed. She…

— Richard Yates

The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy. Even at night, as if on purpose, the development held…

— Richard Yates

“On nights when Gloria stayed up late enough to see Rachel come dreamily home she was always unsettled by the girl's appearance:…

— Richard Yates

“Aveva l'aria di un posto dove la gente viveva davvero - un posto in cui il difficile, intricato processo dell'esistenza poteva risolversi…

— Richard Yates

Your cowardly self-delusions about “love” when you know as well as I do that there’s never been anything between us but contempt…

— Richard Yates

“The only trouble at first was that one small, cold-sober part of her mind floated free of the rest of her; it…

— Richard Yates

“She was fifty-three years old and lonely and oppressed; why couldn't he let her have her illusions? That was what her wounded,…

— 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

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

— 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

“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

“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