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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
Good
Worse
Tried
Grew
Came
Lasts
Generalizations
Last
Generalization
Write
Exquisite
Writing
Discouraged

More quotes by Peter De Vries

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Marriage has driven more than one man to sex.
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We are nothing but a string of gut on a stick of bone riding this piece of astral soot for one piteous splinter of eternity.
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I wondered whether any woman could be happy with a man who says 'folderol'.
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I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.
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What people believe is a measure of what they suffer.
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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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Celibacy is the worst form of self-abuse.
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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 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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Are you pro- or anti-macassar?
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I suppose I shall marry eventually One does that, one drifts into stability
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Why is the awfulness of families such a popular reason for starting another?
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Do you believe in astrology? -I don't even believe in astronomy.
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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.
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A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.
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The trouble with treating people as equals is that the first thing you know they may be doing the same thing to you.
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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.
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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.
Peter De Vries
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Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.
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