Bobeth Yates Quotes

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? ~ Richard Yates

You haven't met someone. Not a real, good someone anyway. Unless ... Did you really hook up
with Kelsey in Portland?"
"Not your business, kid," he said. "But no."
"You seem to like her a lot."
"She's ... nice." And I'm stuck with her. And he still hadn't figured out quite how to handle it. He
needed to handle it. Fix it.
"Maybe you could ask her out."
"You're cute."
She frowned. "That's patronizing. ~ Maisey Yates

I do not like think of them as dead, just alive in another time, they are alive in that time just as we are in this time.
- Rose ~ J. Yates

His family had become hers, in many ways. They weren't perfect, but there was more love in their broken pieces than Kaylee's home had ever had. ~ Maisey Yates

A small amount of kindness can make a large amount of difference ~ J. Yates

But what ultimately made Yates the scourge of copy editors was his simple aversion to criticism; any emendation in his manuscript, be it a single semicolon, would cause dark alcoholic brooding, which would finally erupt in long, hectoring, semicoherent phone calls. ~ Blake Bailey

He couldn't even tell whether he was angry or contrite, whether it was forgiveness he wanted or the power to forgive. ~ Richard Yates

You don't have to be involved with my parents. Not if you don't want to be. Yes, you're the father,
but you aren't my boyfriend or husband. My family is my problem."
"I do," he said, before he even realized what he was saying. "I do want to be involved. With all of it.
We're talking about really making this work, about making a ... I don't know if we're talking about a
family, not in the traditional sense, but we're in this together, right?"
"I guess."
"That means I get to help you with parent things, and other unpleasantness. And you have to know
my brother. ~ Maisey Yates

You never want to be the director who dropped the ball, you know? ~ David Yates

No scientific theory achieves public acceptance until it has been thoroughly discredited. ~ Douglas Yates

He cleared his throat. "You noticed."
"And guys just don't seem to notice me at all!"
"Forgive me for not being too broken up about that ~ Maisey Yates

Rachel was a girl who depended on small, recurrent rituals - that was one of the things he'd come to know about her, and his very ability to identify so specific a trait made him proud of his own capacity for tenderness. ~ Richard Yates

Everything at a NASCAR event carries a corporate logo except the lavatory stalls. ~ Brock Yates

Samuel George looked closely at the freed Negro facing him and he thought that though the man had the look of being familiar with time he bore none of the marks that time could leave. He was well built and well muscled, carrying his head high. There was gray in his hair, but his face was furrowed more by laughter than by years. ~ Elizabeth Yates

As an intense, nicotine-stained, Jean-Paul Sartre sort of man, wasn't it simple logic to expect that he'd be limited to intense, nicotine-stained Jean-Paul Sartre sorts of Women? ~ Richard Yates

Anybody's marriage might benefit from an occasional embargo on talk. ~ 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. ~ Richard Yates

We are all made from the stars and connected to each other and the stars ~ J. Yates

How sick are you? Holy crap. Are you dying or something? Is that why you're going on
a retreat and eating only lettuce? ~ Maisey Yates

She had never heard the word 'intellectual' used as a noun before she went to Barnard, and she took it to heart. It was a brave noun, a proud noun, a noun suggesting lifelong dedication to lofty things and a cool disdain for the commonplace. An intellectual might lose her virginity to a soldier in the park, but she could learn to look back on it with wry, amused detachment. An intellectual might have a mother who showed her underpants when drunk, but she wouldn't let it bother her. And Emily Grimes might not be an intellectual yet, but if she took copious notes in even the dullest of her classes, and if she read every night until her eyes ached, it was only a question of time. ~ Richard Yates

So I'll see you tomorrow then."
"Yeah." His heart rate picked up. She really did make him feel more like a kid than a grown man.
Although the desire she made him feel was certainly a man's desire. "Do you want to have lunch with
me tomorrow?"
"Lunch?"
"Yeah. A picnic. I want to show you this place ~ Maisey Yates

Racing is bulging at the seams with pure nutball characters, men who can drink more, screw more, fight more, laugh more, joke more, than practically any collection of people in the world. ~ Brock Yates

He flexed his fingers and fought the urge to put his hand on her stomach. It was a possessive
gesture, and he felt a little bit possessive ~ Maisey Yates

She swallowed, her eyes dropping to his lips. And he knew she felt it too. ~ Maisey Yates

..for Africa was in a way none of them could explain linked up with heaven and they thought of the two places with the same reverence and ultimate longing. ~ Elizabeth Yates

some times it takes just one person to believe in you to make your dreams come true, But if you don't have the one person, Be the one person and believe in yourself ~ Jane Yates 2015

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. ~ Richard Yates

when i am depressed i never think i will be happy.
when i am happy i never think i will be depressed
2015 ~ Jane Yates

On nights when Gloria stayed up late enough to see Rachel come dreamily home she was always unsettled by the girl's appearance: clothes crushed and hair awry, eyes dazed and mouth swollen, with the lipstick eaten away. Love was often said to be torment, but Rachel could make it seem like punishment as well. ~ Richard Yates

She shook her head and dropped the focus of the light down to the ground. "Well, thanks for ...
everything. Dinner. And stuff. Showing me the ranch."
Why were things so awkward with him?
"Sure." He put his hands in his pockets. "See you tomorrow?"
"Yeah. Tomorrow. ~ Maisey Yates

Largely to spare his feelings, she'd spoken in rather vague terms about wanting to "find herself," and Yates concluded that she'd become a "womens'-libbing bitch" as he sometimes put it. He couldn't speak calmly on the subject; partly, perhaps, because his mother's "independence" had caused him so much grief, Yates's hatred for all "feminist horseshit" bordered on the pathological. ~ Blake Bailey

I once heard some idiot on the radio saying that all great art has suffering as its dominant theme, and that the greatest artists are only able to create because they suffer immensely in their own lives. What a bunch of bullshit. Look at Van Gogh's paintings: there's as much joy in them as there is pain. Suffering is only a single color, and by itself it's boring. ~ Bart Yates

In the world of Ramon Lull, the brilliant civilisation of the Spanish Moslems, with its mysticism, philosophy, art, and science, was close at hand; the Spanish Jews had intensively developed their philosophy, their science and medicine, and their mysticism, or Cabala. To Lull, the Catholic Christian, occurred the generous idea that an Art, based on principles which all three religious traditions held in common, would serve to bind all three together on a common philosophical, scientific, and mystical basis. ~ Frances A. Yates

Oh, you'll what? You'll leave me? What's that supposed to be - a threat or a promise? ~ Richard Yates

All her life, from the time she was eight or nine years old, Gloria had relied on a neat, nearly automatic little trick of her mind for adjusting to minor disappointments. When you opened the bright wrappings of some meager or poorly chosen gift, you simply let your mind tell you it was just what you wanted; that way you could always make the right response, and you could even believe it. ~ Richard Yates

Benj had once said, "A man must have a care to what he puts in his mind, for when he's alone on a hillside and draws it out he'll want treasures to be his company, not regrets. ~ Elizabeth Yates

Shoulder width is an absolute requirement for displaying the V taper that will make or break your physique. ~ Dorian Yates

She was shaking. Her hands, her knees and everywhere in between. And kisses did not make her shake.And she didn't kiss men she didn't like. She didn't kiss men in uniforms who had a fetish for order and cleanliness.
She didn't yell at people, either, but right now the yelling was lower on her list of sins than the kissing.
"What did you ... I don't even ... I'm going to go."
She turned, her shoulders stiff, her heart hammering in her ears.
"If I'd known a kiss would have gotten rid of you, I would have kissed you the moment I saw your car sitting on the side of the road."
Oh. That. Did it.
She whirled back around, anger gaining traction in her again. "Well, sure, your kiss got rid of me. Congratulations. Now who's going to help you get rid of the hard-on it gave you? Your right hand? ~ Maisey Yates

And Emily had yet to shed a single tear. It troubled her all the way back to the city, and she rode with one hand sandwiched between her cheek and the cool, shuddering glass of the limousine window, as if that might help. She tried whispering 'Daddy' to herself, tried closing her eyes and picturing his face, but it didn't work. Then she thought of something that made her throat close up: she might never have been her father's baby, but he had always called her 'little rabbit.' And she was crying easily now, causing her mother to reach over and squeeze her hand; the only trouble was that she couldn't be sure whether she cried for her father or for Warren Maddock, or Maddox, who was back in South Carolina now being shipped out to a division.
But she stopped crying abruptly when she realized that even that was a lie: these tears, as always before in her life, were wholly for herself - for poor, sensitive Emily Grimes whom nobody understood, and who understood nothing. ~ Richard Yates

As the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction. But only when the reality has not been subsumed by foamy legends and fantasies that radiate outward from the actual event. ~ Brock Yates

And Amber?"
Cade looked stricken at the mention. "I knew her before she had breasts, so she doesn't count."
"I'm sure she'd love to hear that."
"She won't." His eyes narrowed in warning. "Ever. Now seriously, what's the deal with you and
Kelsey? ~ Maisey Yates

Rachel came carefully downstairs one morning, in a dressing gown that wasn't quite clean, and stood at the brink of the living room as though preparing to make an announcement. She looked around at each member of the double household - at Evan, who was soberly opening the morning paper, at Phil, who'd been home from Costello's for hours but hadn't felt like sleeping yet, and at her mother, who was setting the table for breakfast - and then she came out with it.

"I love everybody," she said, stepping into the room with an uncertain smile. And her declaration might have had the generally soothing effect she'd intended if her mother hadn't picked it up and exploited it for all the sentimental weight it would bear.

"Oh Rachel," she cried, "What a sweet, lovely thing to say!" and she turned to address Evan and Phil as if both of them might be too crass or numbskulled to appreciate it by themselves. "Isn't that a wonderful thing for this girl to say, on a perfectly ordinary Friday morning? Rachel, I think you've put us all to shame for our petty bickering and our selfish little silences, and it's something I'll never forget. You really do have a marvelous wife, Evan, and I have a marvelous daughter. Oh, and Rachel, you can be sure that everybody in this house loves you, too, and we're all tremendously glad to have you feeling so well."

Rachel's embarrassment was now so intense that it seemed almost to prevent her from taking her place at the table; ~ Richard Yates

The harsh reality is that America moves on four wheels, powered by conventional internal-combustion engines. At this point, while the elite media (excluding Newsweek) trumpet the benefits of hybrids and Ford and Toyota plan to lead the nation into a low-powered, high-mileage hybrid Utopia, the multitudes remain loyal to the gas-guzzling family bus in the driveway. ~ Brock Yates

I had discovered, or rediscovered, that crying is a pleasure - that it can be a pleasure beyond all reckoning if your head is pressed in your mother's waist and her hands are on your back, and if she happens to be wearing clean clothes. ~ Richard Yates