Peter De Vries QUOTES

1 " I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. "

2 " The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults. "

― Peter De Vries

3 " Stein resented the sedative power of religion, or rather the repose available to those blissfully ignorant that the medicament was a fictitious blank. In this exile from peace of mind to which his reason doomed him, he was like an insomniac driven to awaken sleepers from dreams illegitimately won by going around shouting, 'Don't you realize it was a placebo!' Thus it seemed to me that what you were up against in Stein was not logic rampant, but frustrated faith. He could not forgive God for not existing. "

― Peter De Vries , The Blood of the Lamb

4 " Human nature is pretty shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection. "

― Peter De Vries

5 " But I made an issue of the precise wording of the vows. I wanted liberalized ones, with no outmoded Pauline nonsense exacting from the bride the promise to 'obey' the groom. Here I put my foot down, rather in the manner of a husband determined to show at the outset who was boss. 'I'll have no obedience around here!' I said, banging the table. 'Is that clear?'
'Is it an order?'
'Yes. "

― Peter De Vries , The Blood of the Lamb

6 " Deep down, he's shallow. "

― Peter De Vries

7 " Nostalgia ain't what it used to be. "

― Peter De Vries

8 " 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. "

― Peter De Vries , The Blood of the Lamb

9 " There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you. "

― Peter De Vries

10 " Let us hope...that a kind Providence will put a speedy end to the acts of God under which we have been laboring. "

― Peter De Vries

11 " Everybody hates me because I'm so universally liked. "

― Peter De Vries

12 " The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character. "

― Peter De Vries

13 " A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after. "

― Peter De Vries

14 " Write drunk; edit sober. "

― Peter De Vries , Reuben, Reuben

15 " I am not impressed by big words,' said my uncle, who was always ready enough to bandy 'predestination' and 'infralapsarianism. "

― Peter De Vries , The Blood of the Lamb

16 " Could any of these things be happening because they're fallen women?' I asked, drawing on another of the cliches we were given like a quiverful of arrows with which to face a life cursed by sin.

Doc sat a moment with his hand on the door handle before getting out. 'Well now, it's interesting that you ask. I had a woman recently who fell, not just one flight of stairs, but two. She had a baby as perfect as a pool ball. "

― Peter De Vries , The Blood of the Lamb

17 " How I hate this world. I would like to tear it apart with my own two hands if I could. I would like to dismantle the universe star by star, like a treeful of rotten fruit. Nor do I believe in progress. A vermin-eaten saint scratching his filth for heaven is better off than you damned in clean linen. Progress doubles our tenure in a vale of tears. Man is a mistake, to be corrected only by his abolition, which he gives promise of seeing to himself. Oh, let him pass, and leave the earth to the flowers that carpet the earth wherever he explodes his triumphs. Man is inconsolable, thanks to that eternal "Why?" when there is no Why, that question mark twisted like a fishhook in the human heart. "Let there be light," we cry, and only the dawn breaks. "

― Peter De Vries , The Blood of the Lamb

18 " One summer when Carol was attending day camp, Greta had an affair with a man named Mel Carter. He was an Eastern publicity representative for a film studio, and often instructed dinner parties to which we went in those days with accounts of the movies' coming of age. 'We have a picture coming up,' he said once, 'in which a character says "son of a bitch." Lots of exciting things are happening. Still, it's only a beginning. Much remains to be done. "

― Peter De Vries , The Blood of the Lamb

19 " Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk. But you have to have both elements in creation — the Apollonian and the Dionysian, or spontaneity and restraint, emotion and discipline. "

― Peter De Vries , Reuben, Reuben

20 " 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 , The Blood of the Lamb

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