Peter de Vries Quotes

“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.”

“Everybody hates me because I'm so universally liked.”

“The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.”

“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.”

“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.”

“What people believe is a measure of what they suffer.”

“Human nature is pretty shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.”

“I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.”

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