Intelligent, thinking people ...

Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.
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 Richard Yates

Quotes from the same author

Our ability to measure and apportion time affords an almost endless source of comfort.
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 Richard Yates
Every man has a right to keep his own sentiments if he pleases.
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 Richard Yates
The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy. Even at night, as if on purpose, the development held no looming shadows and no gaunt silhouettes. It was invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves … A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place.
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 Richard Yates
Remember what Anatole France said about the dog masturbating on your leg--'Sure, it's honest, but who needs it?
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 Richard Yates
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.
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 Richard Yates