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Words fashioned with somewhat over precise diction are like shapes turned out by a cookie cutter.

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
Shapes
Diction
Words
Cutters
Like
Cookie
Cookies
Fashioned
Somewhat
Precise
Turned
Cutter

More quotes by Peter De Vries

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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.
Peter De Vries
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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.
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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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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The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.
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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Do you believe in astrology? -I don't even believe in astronomy.
Peter De Vries
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The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.
Peter De Vries
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What we are assigned to bear is in a sense a measure of our stature.
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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A politician is a man who can be verbose in fewer words than anyone else.
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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There are times when breakfast seems the one thing worth getting up for.
Peter De Vries
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I wondered whether any woman could be happy with a man who says 'folderol'.
Peter De Vries
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It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.
Peter De Vries
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Marriage has driven more than one man to sex.
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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Rather than waste precious time arguing, I went up and started serving my sentence without delay. It was usually about an hour for epigrams somewhat longer for a paradox.
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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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