Richard Yates Quotes

Then he turned his chair away from his drawing board - he didn't often do that - and sat looking grave and thoughtful, examining the wet end of his cigar. "Well, hell, I'd like to get married too," he said. "I mean, I'm not really immune to it or anything, but there are a few obstacles. Number one, I haven't met the right girl. Number two, I've got too many other responsibilities. Number three - or wait, come to think of it, who the hell needs a number three?"

Oh, Colby said. I see. What d'you see? You really aren't much of a conversationalist, you know that? You 'see', What can you possibly 'see' from what little I've told you?

if self-deception was an illness she was well into its advanced stages.

then he came back and faced her again, trembling. "'Nice,'" he said. "'Nice,' Is that what you want? You want the world to be 'nice'? Because listen, baby. Listen, sweetheart. The world is about as nice as shit. The world is struggle and rape and humilation and death. The world is no fucking place for dreamy little rich girls from St. Louis, do you understand me?"

Because you see there are millions and millions of people in New York - more people than you can possibly imagine, ever - and most of them are doing something that makes sound. Maybe talking, or playing the radio, maybe closing doors, maybe putting their forks down on their plates if they're having dinner, or dropping their shoes if they're going to bed - and because there are so many of them, all those little sounds add up and come together in a kind of hum. But it's so faint - so very, very faint - that you can't hear it unless you listen very carefully for a long time.

She too was a divorced mother, though her former husband had vanished long ago and was referred to only as "that bastard" or "that cowardly son of a bitch".

Then she asked me if I wanted to know something, and without waiting to find out whether I did or not, she told me.

But late that night, as Irving Berlin himself might say, something kind of wonderful happened. I took that little bastard of a story and I built the hell out of it.

Where are the windows? he demanded, spreading his hands. That's the question. Where does the light come in?

Being told he was right was always a tonic to Ken

Then they came out, Finney wearing the foolish smile you sometimes see in the crowds that gape at street accidents

Like frustrated suburban wives we fed on each other's discontent; we became divided into mean little cliques and subdivided into jealously shifting pairs of buddies, and we pieced out our idleness with gossip.

there is an automatic pleasure in watching a thing done well.

Yeah, well, you're right, but what the hell; there's nothing anybody can do about it. Besides, that's ancient history now. I don't even think about it much any more, from - you know - from day to day. Good, she said. It's always important to keep the day-to-day stuff separate from the ancient history, isn't it.

One advantage of the very low lighting in this room, he'd decided, was that it could make almost any girl look like a million dollars.