Peter De Vries
I wondered whether any woman could be happy with a man who says 'folderol'.Collection: Men
What people believe is a measure of what they suffer.Collection: Believe
Love's blindness consists oftener in seeing what is not there than in seeing what is.Collection: Love
All couples must bear the strain of getting acquainted, having been, up to then, merely intimate.Collection: Couple
I can still hear my mother wailing over some new kitchen crisis, "Oh God," and my father answering cozily from the silo, "Were you calling me, dear?Collection: Mother
Do you believe in astrology? -I don't even believe in astronomy.Collection: Believe
Exercise is an unnatural act.Collection: Exercise
Let us hope, I prayed, that a kind Providence will put a speedy end to the acts of God under which we have been laboring.Collection: God
"You don't believe in God," I said to Stein. "God is a word banging around in the human nervous system. He exists about as much as Santa Claus." "Santa Claus has had a tremendous influence, exist or not." "For children." "Lots of saints have died for God with a courage that's hardly childish." "That's part of the horror. It's all a fantasy. It's all for nothing."Collection: Children
The writer can only explore the inner space of his characters by perceptively navigating his own.Collection: Character
Try the Lamentations of Jeremiah. They always pick me up.Collection: Pick Me Up
If there's anything I hate it's the word humorist-I feel like countering with the word seriousist.Collection: Hate
Before the mind snaps, or the heart breaks, it gather itself like a clock about to strike. It might even be said one pulls himself together to disintegrate.Collection: Heart
Man is vile, I know, but people are wonderful.Collection: Men
Mrs Thicknesse and I agreed that a business of his own was probably the only solution for him because he was obviously unemployable.Collection: Entrepreneur
... it is a fact universally acknowledged that a husband is the most ridiculous thing on earth, except for a bachelor.Collection: Marriage
People rarely do what they don't want to.Collection: People
We turned on one another deep, drowned gazes, and exchanged a kiss that reduced my bones to rubber and my brain to gruel.Collection: Kissing
Why is the awfulness of families such a popular reason for starting another?Collection: Reason
I tried to write worse but it was no good; my generalizations came out as before, each more exquisite than the last. I grew discouraged.Collection: Writing
You can make a sordid thing sound like a brilliant drawing-room comedy. Probably a fear we have of facing up to the real issues. Could you say we were guilty of Noel Cowardice?Collection: Real
We must love one another, yes, yes, that's all true enough, but nothing says we have to like each other. It may be the very recognition of all men as our brothers that accounts for the sibling rivalry, and even enmity, we have toward so many of them.Collection: Love
Anyone informed that the universe is expanding and contracting in pulsations of eighty billion years has a right to ask. What's in it for me?Collection: Science
Are you pro- or anti-macassar?Collection: Design
Rather than waste precious time arguing, I went up and started serving my "sentence" without delay. It was usually about an hour for epigrams; somewhat longer for a paradox.Collection: Punishment
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.Collection: Stars
I suppose I shall marry eventually One does that, one drifts into stabilityCollection: Marriage
What we are assigned to bear is in a sense a measure of our stature.Collection: Bears