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If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy.

Richard Yates

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Richard Yates
Humans
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Work
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No one forgets the truth they just get better at lying.
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Anybody's marriage might benefit from an occasional embargo on talk.
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A man could rant and smash and grapple with the State Police, and still the sprinklers whirled at dusk on every lawn and the television droned in every living room.
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There's never been anything funny about a woman dying for love.
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Acting might bring on emotional exhaustion, but writing tired your brains out. Writing led to depression and insomnia and walking around all day with a haggard look.
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...you found you were saying yes when you meant no, and “We’ve got to be together in this thing” when you meant the very opposite ... and then you were face to face, in total darkness, with the knowledge that you didn’t know who you were. And how could anyone else be blamed for that?
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Hard work, is the best medicine yet devised for all the ills of man- and of woman.
Richard Yates
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He knew it was possible for shame to be nursed and doctored like an illness, if you wanted to keep it separate from the rest of your life, but that didn't mean there'd be any way to keep from knowing it was there.
Richard Yates
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Every man has a right to keep his own sentiments if he pleases.
Richard Yates
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if you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want
Richard Yates
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God knows there certainly ought to be a window around here somewhere, for all of us.
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She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents nor Aunt Claire nor Frank nor anyone else had ever had to teach her: that if you wanted something to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.
Richard Yates
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In avoiding specific goals he had avoided specific limitations. For the time being the world, life itself, could be his chosen field.
Richard Yates
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Can you really think artists and writers are the only people entitled to lives of their own?
Richard Yates
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Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love.
Richard Yates
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And do you know a funny thing? I'm almost fifty years old and I've never understood anything in my whole life.
Richard Yates
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Know what we did, Lucy? You and me? We spent our whole lives yearning. Isn't that the God damndest thing?
Richard Yates
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Dying for love might be pitiable, but it wasn't much different, finally, from any other kind of dying.
Richard Yates
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Never say anything that doesn't improve on silence.
Richard Yates
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Our ability to measure and apportion time affords an almost endless source of comfort.
Richard Yates