Peter De Vries Quotes

Quotes about:

• I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.

  Peter De Vries

  Life, Morning, Inspiration

  51 Copy quote

• Life is a zoo in a jungle.

  Peter De Vries

  Life, Zoos, Bad Day

  Peter De Vries (2014). “The Vale of Laughter: A Novel”, p.86, Open Road Media

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• The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.

  Peter De Vries

  Love, Marriage, Wedding

  45 Copy quote

• Let us hope, I prayed, that a kind Providence will put a speedy end to the acts of God under which we have been laboring.

  Peter De Vries

  God, Kind, Ends

  Peter De Vries (2014). “The Mackerel Plaza: A Novel”, p.21, Open Road Media

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• The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.

  Peter De Vries

  Inspirational, Marriage, Children

  Tunnel of Love (1954) ch. 8

  30 Copy quote

• A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.

  Peter De Vries

  Funny, Mothers Day, Mom

  23 Copy quote

• It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.

  Peter De Vries

  God, Fear, Order

  Mackerel Plaza ch. 1 (1958)

  52 Copy quote

• Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.

  Peter De Vries

  Inspirational, Motivational, Food

  Comfort Me with Apples Ch. 15

  95 Copy quote

• The idea of a Supreme Being who creates a world in which one creature is designed to eat another in order to subsist, and then pass a law saying, "Thou shalt not kill," is so monstrously, immeasurably, bottomlessly absurd that I am at a loss to understand how mankind has entertained or given it house room all this long.

  Peter De Vries

  Loss, Order, Law

  11 Copy quote

• We must love one another, yes, yes, that's all true enough, but nothing says we have to like each other.

  Peter De Vries

  True Love, Enmity, Love One Another

  13 Copy quote

• I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

  Peter De Vries

  Work, Writing, Written Word

  86 Copy quote

• The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.

  Peter De Vries

  Nature, Science, World

  Peter De Vries (2014). “Let Me Count the Ways: A Novel”, p.192, Open Road Media

  12 Copy quote

• A hundred years ago Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter was given an A for adultery; today she would rate no better than a C-plus.

  Peter De Vries

  Years, Letters, Today

  Peter De Vries (2014). “Reuben, Reuben: A Novel”, p.150, University of Chicago Press

  29 Copy quote

• We are not primarily put on this earth to see through one another, but to see one another through.

  Peter De Vries

  Sports, Earth, Cooperation

  Peter De Vries (2014). “Let Me Count the Ways: A Novel”, p.177, Open Road Media

  7 Copy quote

• When I see a paragraph shrinking under my eyes like a strip of bacon in a skillet, I know I'm on the right track.

  Peter De Vries

  Eye, Track, Shrinking

  22 Copy quote

• Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk. But you have to have both elements in creation — the Apollonian and the Dionysian, or spontaneity and restraint, emotion and discipline.

  Peter De Vries

  Writing, Discipline, Drunk

  Peter De Vries (2014). “Reuben, Reuben: A Novel”, p.242, University of Chicago Press

  20 Copy quote

• How do you expect mankind to be happy in pairs when it is miserable separately?

  Peter De Vries

  Pairs, Miserable, Mankind

  Peter De Vries (2014). “Reuben, Reuben: A Novel”, p.313, University of Chicago Press

  7 Copy quote

• The rich aren't like us, they pay less taxes.

  Peter De Vries

  Business, Pay, Finance

  8 Copy quote

• There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you.

  Peter De Vries

  Family, Children, Humorous

  9 Copy quote

• Everybody hates me because I'm so universally liked.

  Peter De Vries

  Hate, Hate Me

  Peter De Vries (1967). “The vale of laughter”

  11 Copy quote

• What baffles me is the comfort people find in the idea that somebody dealt this mess. Blind and meaningless chance seems to me so much more congenial - or at least less horrible. Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair.

  Peter De Vries

  Ideas, People, Despair

  9 Copy quote

• Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

  Peter De Vries

  Past, Nostalgia, Used

  Quoted in L.A. Times, 26 July 1964

  12 Copy quote

• When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.

  Peter De Vries

  Broken Heart, Home, Thinking

  Peter De Vries (2014). “The Tunnel of Love: A Novel”, p.85, University of Chicago Press

  10 Copy quote

• Life is a crowded superhighway with bewildering cloverleaf exits on which a man is liable to find himself speeding back in the direction he came.

  Peter De Vries

  Funny Life, Men, Exit

  14 Copy quote

• We pay for security with boredom, for adventure with bother.

  Peter De Vries

  Adventure, Boredom, Pay

  Peter De Vries (2014). “Without a Stitch in Time: A Selection of the Best Humorous Short Pieces”, p.32, University of Chicago Press

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