108 Quotes by Richard Yates

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

He let the fingers of one hand splay out across the pocket of his shirt to show what a simple, physical thing the heart was; then he made the same hand into a fist.

The hell with this aching, suffering, callow, half-assed delusion that he was in "love" with her. The hell with "love" anyway, and with every other phony, time-wasting, half-assed emotion in the world.

It took Emily a long time to realize that Sarah was dead. Sometimes, waking from a dream of childhood filled with Sarah’s face and Sarah’s voice, she would go and study her own face in the bright bathroom mirror until she found assurance that it was still the face of Sarah’s sister, and that it didn’t look old.

Never say anything that doesn’t improve on silence.

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

Hopeless emptiness. Now you’ve said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.

Yes, me.” She made a claw of her hand and clutched at her collarbone. “Me. Me. Me. Oh, you poor, self-deluded – Look at you! Look at you, and tell me how by any stretch” – she tossed her head, and the grin of her teeth glistened white in the moonlight – “by any stretch of the imagination you can call yourself a man!

It takes backbone to lead the life you want.