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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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Peter De Vries
Age: 83 †
Born: 1910
Born: February 27
Died: 1993
Died: September 28
Editor
Novelist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Last
Generalization
Write
Exquisite
Writing
Discouraged
Good
Worse
Tried
Grew
Came
Lasts
Generalizations

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The rich aren't like us, they pay less taxes.
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A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.
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Do you believe in astrology? -I don't even believe in astronomy.
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There are times when breakfast seems the one thing worth getting up for.
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I think people love each other a little more than they hate each other ... Love has a slim hold on the human corporation, like fifty-one per cent, but it's enough.
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Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.
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I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.
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I wondered whether any woman could be happy with a man who says 'folderol'.
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People rarely do what they don't want to.
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... it is a fact universally acknowledged that a husband is the most ridiculous thing on earth, except for a bachelor.
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I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.
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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.
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You ought to be ashamed, a woman in an Easter bonnet told Stein. Your race gave us our religion... From ancient polytheism, the belief in lots of gods, the woman continued a little more eruditely, the Hebrew nation led us on to the idea that there is only one. Which is just a step from the truth, said Stein.
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Are you pro- or anti-macassar?
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What people believe is a measure of what they suffer.
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This human nature is shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.
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We must love one another, yes, yes, that's all true enough, but nothing says we have to like each other. It may be the very recognition of all men as our brothers that accounts for the sibling rivalry, and even enmity, we have toward so many of them.
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The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.
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A politician is a man who can be verbose in fewer words than anyone else.
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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