Richard Yates Quotes

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

Richard Yates

Believe, Thinking, People

Richard Yates (2010). “Revolutionary Road”, p.60, Random House

72 Copy quote
if you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want

Richard Yates

Success, Failure, New Years Resolution

49 Copy quote
Never say anything that doesn't improve on silence.

Richard Yates

Silence, Say Anything

Richard Yates (2014). “A Good School: A Novel”, p.90, Picador

31 Copy quote
No one forgets the truth; they just get better at lying.

Richard Yates

Truth, Lying, Reality

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If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy.

Richard Yates

Lying, Simple, Tragedy

26 Copy quote
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

Years, Funny Things, Fifty

51 Copy quote
Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around.

Richard Yates

People

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if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.

Richard Yates

Honesty, Being Alone, Done

35 Copy quote
Why did everything always change when all you wanted, all you had ever humbly asked of whatever God there might be, was that certain things be allowed to stay the same?

Richard Yates

Might, Certain, Wanted

36 Copy quote
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

Inability To Love, Insane, Definitions

Richard Yates (2010). “Revolutionary Road”, p.290, Random House

33 Copy quote
You're painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture.

Richard Yates

Dying, Culture, Alive

32 Copy quote
He couldn't even tell whether he was angry or contrite, whether it was forgiveness he wanted or the power to forgive.

Richard Yates

Forgiveness, Forgiving, Wanted

Richard Yates (2010). “Revolutionary Road”, p.31, Random House

34 Copy quote
The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy. Even at night, as if on purpose, the development held no looming shadows and no gaunt silhouettes. It was invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves … A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place.

Richard Yates

Running, Grief, Night

29 Copy quote
You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then you got to have a job you don't like. Great. This is the way ninety-eight-point-nine per cent of the people work things out, so believe me, buddy, you've got nothing to apologize for.

Richard Yates

Sweet, Jobs, Nice

26 Copy quote
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

Real, People, Emptiness

10 Copy quote
I'm only interested in stories that are about the crushing of the human heart.

Richard Yates

Crush, Heart, Stories

17 Copy quote
She just happened to feel like it. Wasn’t that after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?

Richard Yates

Selfish, Complicated, Reason

25 Copy quote
Our ability to measure and apportion time affords an almost endless source of comfort.

Richard Yates

Comfort, Source, Endless

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When you wrote it didn't matter if hysteria sometimes came up in your face and voice (unless, of course, you let it find its way into your "literary voice") because writing was done in merciful privacy and silence. Even if you were partly out of your mind it might turn out to be all right: you could try for control even harder than Blanche Dubois was said to have tried, and with luck you could still bring off a sense of order and sanity on the page for the reader. Reading, after all, was a thing done in privacy and silence too.

Richard Yates

Reading, Writing, Order

Richard Yates (2010). “Young Hearts Crying”, p.184, Random House

4 Copy quote
People did change, and a change could be a bloom as well as a withering.

Richard Yates

People, Wells, Withering

Richard Yates (2010). “Revolutionary Road”, p.156, Random House

7 Copy quote
A man could rant and smash and grapple with the State Police, and still the sprinklers whirled at dusk on every lawn and the television droned in every living room.

Richard Yates

Men, Police, Television

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Hard work, is the best medicine yet devised for all the ills of man- and of woman.

Richard Yates

Hard Work, Men, Medicine

4 Copy quote
What a subtle, treacherous thing it was to let yourself go that way! Because once you've started it was terribly difficult to stop; soon you were saying "I'm sorry, of course you're right", and "Whatever you think is best", and "you're the most wonderful and valuable thing int he world", and the next thing you knew all honesty, all truth, was as far away and glimmering, as hopelessly unattainable as the world of the golden people.

Richard Yates

Honesty, Sorry, Thinking

9 Copy quote
Dying for love might be pitiable, but it wasn't much different, finally, from any other kind of dying.

Richard Yates

Dying, Different, Might

Richard Yates (2013). “Cold Spring Harbor”, p.83, Bantam

15 Copy quote
Your cowardly self-delusions about “love” when you know as well as I do that there’s never been anything between us but contempt and distrust and a terrible sickly dependence on each other’s weakness- that’s why. That’s why I couldn’t stop laughing about the Inability to Love, and that’s why I can’t stand to let you touch me, and that’s why I’ll never again believe in anything you think, let alone anything you say

Richard Yates

Believe, Thinking, Self

7 Copy quote

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Born: February 3, 1926
Died: November 7, 1992
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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