“Oh-h-h-h— Hidey, tidey, Christ Almighty Who the hell are we? Flim, flam, God damn We’re the infantry…” — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“I know I had it - I could feel it, the way you feel blood in your veins - and now I… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
They say that we are better educated than our parents' generation. What they mean is that we go to school longer. It… — Richard Yates Parenting Copy Share Image
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 Emptiness Copy Share Image
“Whoever said you can't love ridiculous things? God knows i love you, and you're the most ridiculous woman I ever met!” — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
Can you really think artists and writers are the only people entitled to lives of their own? — Richard Yates Art Copy Share Image
...his job was the very least important part of his life, never to be mentioned except in irony. — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
And do you know a funny thing? I'm almost fifty years old and I've never understood anything in my whole life. — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“And you know what else I used to love? I loved to watch you get into your car and drive away -… — Richard Yates Drive Copy Share Image
“she had always been ready to take off the minute she happened to feel like it ("Don't talk to me that way,… — Richard Yates Heart Copy Share Image
“As a writer, I like the list of "things to strive for" that Richard Yates kept above his typewriter: genuine clarity genuine… — Richard Yates Advice-for-writers Copy Share Image
Why did everything always change when all you wanted, all you had ever humbly asked of whatever God there might be, was… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“The place had filled him with a sense of wisdom hovering just out of reach, of unspeakable grace prepared and waiting just… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“It depressed him to consider how much energy he had wasted, over the years, in the self-denying posture of apology. From now… — Richard Yates Apology 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… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“my first wife passed away in the spring of—” and for a moment he is touched with terror. The spring of what?… — Richard Yates Marriage Copy Share Image
She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents nor Aunt Claire nor Frank… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
It haunted him all night, while he slept alone; it was still there in the morning, when he swallowed his coffee and… — Richard Yates Coffee Copy Share Image
“The whole point of crying was to quit before you cornied it up. The whole point of grief itself was to cut… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“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 Life Copy Share Image
“They could lie drowsing now under the sound of kindly voices in the living room, a sound whose intricately rhythmic rise and… — Richard Yates Cool places Copy Share Image
What a subtle, treacherous thing it was to let yourself go that way! Because once you've started it was terribly difficult to… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“She quickly took a drink to hide her mouth. That mannerism had never changed: whenever Sarah was embarrassed, after she'd told a… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their… — Richard Yates Happy life Copy Share Image
“Oh, Frank. Can you really think artists and writers are the only people entitled to lives of their own?” — Richard Yates Art Copy Share Image
If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein… — Richard Yates Humans Copy Share Image
I'm only interested in stories that are about the crushing of the human heart. — Richard Yates Crush Copy Share Image
People did change, and a change could be a bloom as well as a withering... — Richard Yates Change Copy Share Image
“It reminded her too, time and again, of her own susceptibility to panic and her unfathomable dread of being alone.” — Richard Yates Fear 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
“He was big and sturdy, with a heavy jaw and a voice that made her want to curl up and ride in… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be… — Richard Yates Alone Copy Share Image
Our ability to measure and apportion time affords an almost endless source of comfort. — Richard Yates Ability Copy Share Image
“Wish I didn't have to go to work tomorrow", he said. "Don't, then. Stay home." "No. I guess I've got to go.” — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
“They knew what forgiveness was; they were willing to take him for better or worse; they loved him.” — Richard Yates Forgiveness Copy Share Image
“Sometimes it seemed that he'd said six or eight funny things in his life, and that what passed for his sense of… — Richard Yates Funny Copy Share Image
Acting might bring on emotional exhaustion, but writing tired your brains out. Writing led to depression and insomnia and walking around all… — Richard Yates Acting Copy Share Image
He knew it was possible for shame to be nursed and doctored like an illness, if you wanted to keep it separate… — Richard Yates Illness Copy Share Image
“There was probably nothing to be done about a woman like this. Dying for love might be pitiable, but it wasn't much… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
