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"I mean talk about decadence," he declared, "how decadent can a society get? Look at it this way. This countrys probably the psychiatric, psychoanalytical capital of the world."
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Richard YatesHe couldnt help pondering how he would feel if his own father were to — Richard Yates
"He couldnt help pondering how he would feel if his own father were to die. It was unthinkable: Jock MacKenzie was in the very prime of life, a laughing, sailing, golf- and tennis-playing man who could still defeat his son at arm-wrestling any time he felt like it, and often did. Still, there were heart attacks; there were strokes; there was cancer. Nobody lived forever. Jock MacKenzies anger could be terrible, but in his gentle moods there was no finer companion in the world. Every worthwhile thing Steve knew, it seemed, was something he had learned from his father. As a condition of receiving a car on his sixteenth birthday, Steve had been made to memorise the whole of Kiplings "If", which later helped him earn the only "A" hed ever had in Pop Driscolls course; and certain lines of that poem, remembered now as they sounded in his fathers voice , were enough to fill his eyes with tears. This Sunday, he promised himself, he would call home and have a good long talk with the old man. "When youre talking, Steve", Jock MacKenzie had told him once, "and I dont care who its to or what its about, the important thing is knowing when to stop. Never say anything that doesnt improve on silence."
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Richard Yates
Richard Yates
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"I still had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere, as far ahead of me as the seniors at Rye when I was in sixth grade; people who knew everything instinctively, who made their lives work out the way they wanted without even trying, who never had to make the best of a bad job because it never occurred to them to do anything less than perfectly the first time. Sort of heroic super-people, all of them beautiful and witty and calm and kind, and I always imagined that when I did find them Id suddenly know that I belonged among them, that I was one of them, that Id been meant to be one of them all along, and everything in the meantime had been a mistake; and theyd know it too. Id be like the ugly duckling among the swans."
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Richard YatesQuote
"You know?" he said. "This is the kind of thing that really—" he paused, examining the wisp of smoke that curled from his wet pipestem. "Really makes you stop and think."
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Richard YatesQuote
"Why couldnt she stop talking? Did all lonely people have that problem?"
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Richard YatesQuote
"After a while he stopped listening. His ears took in only the rise and fall of her voice, the elaborate, familiar, endless rhythm of it; but from long experience he was able to say "Oh yes" or "Of course," in all the right places."
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Richard YatesQuote
"Wow," he said. "Now youve said it. The hopeless emptiness. Hell, plenty of people are on to the emptiness part; out where I used to work, on the Coast, thats all we ever talked about. Wed sit around talking about emptiness all night. Nobody ever said hopeless, though; thats where wed chicken out. Because maybe it does take a certain amount of guts to see the emptiness, but it takes a whole hell of a lot more to see the hopelessness. And I guess when you do see the hopelessness, thats where theres nothing to do but take off. If you can."
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Richard Yates