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People rarely do what they don't want to.

Peter De Vries

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Peter De Vries
Age: 83 †
Born: 1910
Born: February 27
Died: 1993
Died: September 28
Editor
Novelist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
People
Rarely
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More quotes by Peter De Vries

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I tried to write worse but it was no good my generalizations came out as before, each more exquisite than the last. I grew discouraged.
Peter De Vries
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The rich aren't like us, they pay less taxes.
Peter De Vries
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I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best -- it's all they'll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money -- provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don't need it.
Peter De Vries
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I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.
Peter De Vries
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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
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There are times when breakfast seems the one thing worth getting up for.
Peter De Vries
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All couples must bear the strain of getting acquainted, having been, up to then, merely intimate.
Peter De Vries
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... it is a fact universally acknowledged that a husband is the most ridiculous thing on earth, except for a bachelor.
Peter De Vries
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We turned on one another deep, drowned gazes, and exchanged a kiss that reduced my bones to rubber and my brain to gruel.
Peter De Vries
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Why is the awfulness of families such a popular reason for starting another?
Peter De Vries
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Mrs Thicknesse and I agreed that a business of his own was probably the only solution for him because he was obviously unemployable.
Peter De Vries
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There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you.
Peter De Vries
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Sex in marriage is like medicine. Three times a day for the first week. Then once a day for another week. Then once every three or four days till the condition clears up.
Peter De Vries
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I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.
Peter De Vries
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I made a tentative conclusion. It seemed from all of this that uppermost among human joys is the negative one of restoration: not going to the stars, but learning that one may stay where one is.
Peter De Vries
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This human nature is shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.
Peter De Vries
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Celibacy is the worst form of self-abuse.
Peter De Vries
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What people believe is a measure of what they suffer.
Peter De Vries
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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
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Words fashioned with somewhat over precise diction are like shapes turned out by a cookie cutter.
Peter De Vries