Rafael Yglesias Quotes & Sayings

I didn't want readers to think I was asking to be praised for taking care of my wife while she was ill. Lots of people are heroic, more heroic than I was, when faced with the suffering of someone they love. — Rafael Yglesias

Re: Central Park
But the height proved the awesome truth that the park was made by man: nature re-created where it had been killed. — Rafael Yglesias

A hand landed on his ass and urged him on and there was no wall, there were no obstacles, there was only the sea of Margaret, the hot bath of her enveloping love. She put her lips to his ear and whispered warm while cool hands pressed his back and steered him all the way into her. 'You'll never get away. You'll move in with me, we'll get married, we'll have children. You'll be here forever,' she whispered, and in the ocean of her being, he let go of the frightened air trapped in his heart, he exhaled the despair of his soul and he thought with glee: I'm home! I'm home! Thank God, I'm home! — Rafael Yglesias

Otherwise the silence in the room was profound, the silence of places Brian had not yet been: gazing at the lifeless body of a beloved, the echo of a lost illusion, the tinnitus of betrayal. — Rafael Yglesias

Sooner or later everyone is defeated by their desires. — Rafael Yglesias

The world is chock-full of monsters. — Rafael Yglesias

After puberty, you look to one sex for more than friendship and to the other for less-than-complete intimacy. — Rafael Yglesias

Nothing on earth is more vicious than a disappointed American public. — Rafael Yglesias

It was always the most striking scene, the best work, the most disturbing emotion and unsettling idea that attracts criticism. — Rafael Yglesias

People don't so much believe in God as that they choose not to believe in nothing. — Rafael Yglesias

The most fun thing about being a writer is that everything is interesting. — Rafael Yglesias

You have to feed the press or they'll eat you. — Rafael Yglesias

You see, I'm not the hack. God is. And the Old Fart doesn't know how to write a conclusion that'll satisfy his audience. He leaves that to us, his lost children, doing his dirty work, inventing uplifting endings to erase his mistakes. — Rafael Yglesias

I'm willing to keep an open mind about the existence of God or whether or not Joye's Ulysses is a great novel, but I have no doubt that one way or another child molesters are nurtured, not born. — Rafael Yglesias

Perhaps they assumed that he would have a hard time putting her first. Perhaps they had not understood that for a long time she had come first with him, that for many years she had been his heart's home and his mind's anchor and that fighting to keep her alive was essential to preserving his own soul. — Rafael Yglesias

Had any parent ever succeeded in hiding marital unhappiness from their child? — Rafael Yglesias

There's nothing that makes an artist more beloved than the audience pitying him because his work comes at a price they would never pay. — Rafael Yglesias

Little girls think their fathers will save them. Women know better. — Rafael Yglesias

Gary was a righteous man, frank about his lusts, and they were the lusts of the righteous: for sugar and fat and the succour of a wife. — Rafael Yglesias

Maybe becoming a monster is a sign of strength. — Rafael Yglesias

... and that did it. That brought those depthless blue eyes within a foot, perhaps six inches, maybe even closer, and something happened inside Enrique, like a guitar string suddenly unstrung. There was a shock and a vibration in his heart, a palpable break inside the cavity of his chest. He had dropped out of high school and never took a class in anatomy, but he did know that the cardiovascular system wasn't supposed to react as if it were the source and center of feeling. And yet he would have sworn to all and sundry - not that he expected to admit it to anyone - that Margaret, or at least her bright blue eyes, had just snapped his brittle heart. — Rafael Yglesias

To me, people's lives and loves are entwined with their characters, natures and circumstances. I regard all general advice with skepticism. — Rafael Yglesias

How far we've come, Jeff," Brian whispered to the cold, wet streets. "How far the geeky boys have come. — Rafael Yglesias

New York is a much more bourgeois city, more of a tourist attraction than a muscular metropolis. It's lost moxie and a rough energy, while gaining grace and friendliness. I love both versions of the city, but I wish the prosperous Manhattan would become a little easier for young people to afford. — Rafael Yglesias

Something about Christmas decorations inspired delinquency. — Rafael Yglesias

Whether you want to entertain or to provoke, to break hearts or reassure them, what you bring to your writing must consist of your longings and disappointments. — Rafael Yglesias

And into its bland merciless face what did he have to show as his proof that he deserved to live?
- Nothing but that he was afraid to die. — Rafael Yglesias

It's hard to conceive of someone who could work for at least a few hours each day for months and years on the same story without it being close enough to their life experience to fuel their commitment. — Rafael Yglesias

Jeff had learned the wisdom of perversity and made his lonely secret into art. — Rafael Yglesias

Relationships, it seems to me, are timeless. What works between two people always works; what doesn't is always troublesome. Over time, people learn - or not - how to negotiate what's difficult, but that doesn't mean the misfit has gone away entirely. — Rafael Yglesias

You could become anyone, including your real self. — Rafael Yglesias

Sadly, for those who are busy sawing off their feet to escape the trap of cliches, every story is chock full of them and sometimes depends on an especially hoary one. — Rafael Yglesias

For a while she had a vague longing to be a psychologist. "Talking therapy is dead," Gary said when she raised the idea. "It's all pills now. — Rafael Yglesias

Arthur Conan Doyle was entranced by the notion of a brilliant detective who can deduce everything a stranger has been up to from the merest clue, and yet can't have a trusting relationship with his closest friend. — Rafael Yglesias

Percocet? Seriously?" Brian laughed bitterly. "That's so nineties. He should at least update his addictions. — Rafael Yglesias

Oh God, I'm old and I've never been young. — Rafael Yglesias

Also, serial killers, child killers, they're hot, they're the new cool kids, the new vampires, the new zombies, everybody's favourite spook monster. — Rafael Yglesias