Richard Yates

Being told he was right was always a tonic to Ken

there is an automatic pleasure in watching a thing done well.

Like frustrated suburban wives we fed on each other's discontent; we became divided into mean little cliques and subdivided into jealously shifting pairs of buddies, and we pieced out our idleness with gossip.

And she was halfway up the stairs before he decided that his best reply was to make no reply at all.

if self-deception was an illness she was well into its advanced stages.

We had a few beers and laughed more than we meant to and punched each other's arms; in the end, out on the sidewalk again, I think we shook hands about three times in saying goodbye. Just before turning away he said "Listen, though: don't look back too much, okay? You can drive yourself crazy that way."

"I think you'll find ordinary people are nicer than you give them credit for being"

"Well, marriage is funny, Mike", Harold said once with the wind whipping the vapor of his voice over his shoulder. "You can go along for years without ever knowing who you're married to. It's a riddle."

"You're right," Michael said. "It is."

"Then maybe once in a while you take a look at this girl, this woman, and you think: What's the deal? How come? Why her? Why me?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean, Harold."

"Try to remember this, men. The mark of a professional in any line of work - I mean any line of work - is that he can make difficult things look easy."

Could a person really be cynical about everything in the world and still expect to have friends?

"But this isn't a lecture course. The only way any of us can learn this craft is by saturating ourselves in examples of it, in and out of print, and then trying to put the best of what we've found into our own work."

"Of course. And isn't that the worst kind of loss? When you don't even realise the value of something until you've thrown it away?"