Yates Quotes & Sayings

What? she asked, like she was surprised, even though she was fully aware that she was both distracting herself and distancing herself by becoming Therapist Sadie, rather than being Sadie the bag of flail who was marinating in her own lustypants. — Maisey Yates

They say that we are better educated than our parents' generation. What they mean is that we go to school longer. It is not the same thing. — Richard Yates

Personally, I read a lot of scripts. — David Yates

There were other times, fortunately, when he knew better. "All I write about is family," Elizabeth Cox told him. "That's all there is to write about," Yates replied. — Blake Bailey

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

He's been living on the fringes of art for so many years, talking and talking about it, that he's come to expect all the prerogatives of being an artist without ever doing the work. I mean he's an art bum ... — Richard Yates

When you make a documentary film, after many years the only thing you remember is what you put into the film, not what you took out. — Pamela Yates

Troubles are God setting the stage for greater blessings in your life. — John Yates

More books, more racing and more foolishness with cars and motorcycles are in the works. — Brock Yates

A man could rant and smash and grapple with the State Police, and still the sprinklers whirled at dusk on every lawn and the television droned in every living room. — Richard Yates

Loveliest of any blossoming thing to her was that green stalk with its white bells. White was the most beautiful color she knew. Yet when she would say that to Amos he would remind her that the brown of the earth from which the flowers came was a good color too. — Elizabeth Yates

Some people's joints articulate in a manner that allows them to benefit greatly from squats; others may not benefit at all. If you're not too tall and have short limbs, it may be the best exercise for you, but if you're tall with long legs, it might be both ineffective and dangerous.I was stubbornly faithful to squats for years until I finally realized they were not well-suited for my body structure. After I switched tomore muscle-intensive movements, my gains in leg size were astounding. — Dorian Yates

There was a day when you could identify a NASCAR Ford, Chevrolet, or Dodge and they actually looked like "stock cars." Now they are pod machines, slick on the outside but still powered by the same Neanderthal carbureted pushrod V-8s that have been under their hoods for half a century. If this is real auto racing, then the WWF ought to be part of the Olympics. — Brock 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

A lot of Hollywood films tend to be bloated, bombastic, loud. At the same time, I do like the infrastructure of making a blockbuster; it's like having a big train set. — David Yates

Don't get me wrong, I think bikes are terrific. I own several of my own, including a trendy mountain style, and ride them for pleasure and light exercise. — Brock Yates

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

Sorry, I had to break the tension; it was making me uncomfortable. It reminded me a lot of some
of my dates in high school. Just before the guy copped a feel."
"Sorry," Kelsey said, her apology directed at Cole. "She doesn't interact with people very often. It's
... like a puppy that gets locked in the laundry room all day."
"Should I get her a treat?" he asked.
"Hey," Alexa said, her tone defensive. "Is the treat bacon?"
"Milk-Bone," he said.
"Then I'll pass and head to bed." She looped her arm through Kelsey's, and they turned, stepping
off the porch. — Maisey Yates

I hope that wasn't because of what I said about the barrel racing," Kelsey said.
"Probably me," Cole said. "She's sensitive. And I'm not. I'll apologize later. — Maisey Yates

Where does a child of mine get all that hair, I wonder? Arthur's not exceptionally hirsute, and the men on my side of the family are as bald as potatoes. I must have had an affair with a gorilla before he was born, but you'd think I'd remember something like that, wouldn't you? ... Be a dear and remind me to leave my brandy flask at home the next time I visit the zoo. — Bart Yates

The only award I've been nominated for is a Scottish BAFTA. A Scottish BAFTA, it's like hearing that the animals have their own Olympics. You hear all this stuff about TV being faked. Of course it's faked. It's all faked. That documentary a couple of weeks ago about tribal warfare among monkeys, that was all filmed in a Yates wine lodge in Dundee. Comic Relief is faked. Everybody in Africa is fine. — Frankie Boyle

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

The main reason why serious historical studies of the Rosicrucian manifestos and their influence have hitherto been on the whole lacking is no doubt because the whole subject has been bedevilled by enthusiasts for secret societies. There is a vast literature on Rosicrucianism which assumes the existence of a secret society, founded by Christian Rosencreutz, and having a continuous existence up to modern times. In the vague and inaccurate world of so-called 'occultist' writing this assumption has produced a kind of literature which deservedly sinks below the notice of the serious historian. And when, as if often the case, the misty discussion of 'Rosicrucians' and their history becomes involved with the masonic myths, the enquirer feels that he is sinking helplessly into a bottomless bog. — Frances A. Yates

Actually I have something to tell you," he said.
"You solved global warming."
"Dammit, Katy, now whatever I say is going to sound stupid. I'll fail because I didn't solve global warming."
"Fine, work on that next. — Maisey Yates

He adores you, you know. You're very lucky to have a brother like that."
I fall into step with her. "Yeah, right, I'm the luckiest guy in the universe." I heave a sigh. "But in my next life I'd prefer a puppy, okay? — Bart Yates

When you're trapped in an abusive home environment you can feel completely hopeless and lost. Remember that situations can change with time, and that it won't be this way forever. — Reggie Yates

I should probably apologize for how much I swear, but fuck it. I've read that some people think swearing shows a lack of imagination and a limited vocabulary, but sometimes "darn" and "poop" and "oh heck" just don't cut it. Besides, swearing is kind of fun. — Bart Yates

He was happy enough to stay in this jumbled, lively place where the drinks were cheap and the band was loud and he could feel the inner peace that comes from knowing that all your clothes are new and perfectly fitted. — Richard Yates

Now I'm starting, relatively, to think straight again. I live one day at a time, one hour at a time. What makes it all worthwhile is my children. — Paula Yates

The subjects of her talk didn't matter; he knew what she was really saying. Helpless and gentle, small and tired and anxious to please, she was asking him to agree that her life was not a failure. — Richard Yates

The bicycle is a former child's toy that has now been elevated to icon status because, presumably, it can move the human form from pillar to post without damage to the environment. — Brock Yates

Yates's face was filled with passion, his twilight-blue eyes brimming with it, and I suddenly longed to feel the way he did, committed to something that filled me with purpose. — Catherine Linka

But she didn't pull away from him. If anything, she seemed to sort of melt against him. It was the
first time she'd willingly accepted something from him without getting stiff and defensive and
generally annoyed — Maisey Yates

I believe that those who believe in the power of human rights must find new ways to address economic injustice - and on a scale commensurate with the millions of people around the world that are mired in poverty. — Pamela Yates

Then the fight went out of control. It quivered their arms and legs and wrenched their faces into shapes of hatred, it urged them harder and deeper into each other's weakest points, showing them cunning ways around each other's strongholds and quick chances to switch tactics, feint, and strike again. In the space of a gasp for breath it sent their memories racing back over the years for old weapons to rip the scabs off old wounds; it went on and on. — Richard Yates

Sometimes I can feel as if I were sparkling all over," she was saying, "and I want to go out and do something that's absolutely crazy, and marvelous ... — Richard Yates

If you make a great film full of emotion, of pathos, people want to continue to know more, to work harder. — Pamela Yates

A moment of clarity

I realise that I stress so much about the past, because I am scared of the future.
It is easier for my mind to occupy itself with troubles of long-ago; rather than greet fears of the unknown tomorrow.
The goal is to be alive now and live in the moment. But there are days when I find this almost impossible to achieve.
Yet knowing this is liberating.

Jane Yates 02/02/2016 — J. Yates

In avoiding specific goals he had avoided specific limitations. For the time being the world, life itself, could be his chosen field. — Richard Yates

I am a work in progress. — Violet Yates

Some things you did were worth regretting; others not. — Richard Yates

No one forgets the truth; they just get better at lying. — Richard Yates

Time travel is complicated, or so we think, since we have not yet managed to actually figure out how to do it. — Serena Yates

I didn't get here based on lineage, Travis. I'm here because I work hard. The only thing that's blue in my family lineage are the collars. The blood is just red. — Maisey Yates

Unlike conventional jocks, who tend to sell aluminum siding and give canned speeches to parochial-school athletic banquets in the off-season, race drivers never shuck their image when they leave the stadium. They are supposed to be zany, nomadic soldiers of fortune who are involved in wild endeavors during every waking moment. — Brock Yates

sometimes I feel my tether is too short." "You will lose that tether soon enough, and then someday when you are in a heap of hurt and trouble, you are going to reach for it and wish your mama was on the other end. — Ronald Yates

I seem to have to lost confidence in just about everything else. I've come to believe that only a very, very few matters in the world can ever be trusted to make sense. — Richard 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

Vevers remarked on what struck them as Yates's peculiar attitude toward women: 'He expected them to drink a lot and be beautiful all the time. — Blake Bailey

Other players and at least one great composer - Beethoven - had lived with deafness, but hearing loss wasn't where Hugh's woes ended. There was the vertigo, the trembling, the periodic loss of vision. There was nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, galloping pulse. Worst of all was the almost constant tinnitus. He had always thought deafness meant silence. This was not true, at least not in his case. Hugh Yates had a constantly braying burglar alarm in the middle of his head. — Stephen King

And do you know a funny thing? I'm almost fifty years old and I've never understood anything in my whole life. — Richard Yates

My first movie ever was 'Breaking Away.' I stumbled into an incredible part in a movie that was incredible to be a part of. Peter Yates, the director, became a lifelong friend. He sort of plucked me from obscurity and gave me a life. — Daniel Stern

I also think you have less separation if you are fuller. If you go to the gym and pump your arms up they are bigger because of the blood volume, the fullness. But the separation is not so defined. — Dorian Yates

I like to create an atmosphere where actors feel safe enough to take risks. — David Yates

I also say you can tell your true friends, by the ones who put a bucket by your bed when your drunk and going to be sick - (my quote - so proud) — J. Yates

the progress of which mankind is so proud, may well be known to the gods by another name. — Dornford Yates

What right had she to oppose him? Yet it was he who had given her freedom. The word was meaningless unless in its light each one lived up to his highest and his best. — Elizabeth Yates

For a year she found an exquisite pain - almost pleasure - in facing the world as if she didn't care. Look at me, she would say to herself in the middle of a trying day. Look at me: I'm surviving; I'm coping; I'm in control of all this. — Richard Yates

If we are honest, we must admit that our employers have power over us. Some of them may be nice and some of them may be nasty, but none of them will spend money just because it would be good for us. They know that as individuals we are less powerful than they. We have only our ability to work to sell, but they have the jobs. — Michael D. Yates

Heartbreak was the worst. It was worse than a cord wrapped around the wheel on you computer chair. — 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

Now you've said it. The hopeless emptiness. Hell, plenty of people are on to the emptiness part; out where I used to work, on the Coast, that's all we ever talked about. We'd sit around talking about emptiness all night. Nobody ever said 'hopeless,' though; that's where we'd chicken out. Because maybe it does take a certain amount of guts to see the emptiness, but it takes a whole hell of a lot more to see the hopelessness. And I guess when you do see the hopelessness, that's when there's nothing to do but take off. If you can — Richard Yates

I don't care if it takes you five years of doing nothing at all; I don't care if you decide after five years that what you really want is to be a bricklayer or a mechanic or a merchant seaman. Don't you see what I'm saying? It's got nothing to do with definite, measurable talents - it's your very essence that's being stifled here. — Richard Yates

It's just that . . . when you have kids, it just changes things." "Do me a favor, Yates. Please don't give me that having-children-alters-you spiel. I listen to that crap enough from my painfully few friends. — Harlan Coben

And they fell asleep like children. — Richard Yates

My favorite song is happy birthday,
as that means there will be cake — Jane Yates

Probably not." He looked down at his watch. "It's about time for dinner. Do you want to come
down and eat in the lodge? We deliver up to the cabins too, but we also do a family-style dinner."
"Um ... " Did she really want to spend more time with Cole today? Strangely, she found she did.
"That sounds great. — Maisey Yates

Destiny doesn't control your life, but it does place you on a path. It's how you walk down that path that determines stories I tell. — Pamela Yates

He knew it was possible for shame to be nursed and doctored like an illness, if you wanted to keep it separate from the rest of your life, but that didn't mean there'd be any way to keep from knowing it was there. — Richard Yates

Once, long years ago, I thought I could set a canoe-load of my people free by breaking the bands at my wrists and killing the white man who held the weapon. I had the strength in my hands to do such a deed and I had the fire within, but I didn't do it."
"What held you back?"
Amos shook his head. "My hand was restrained and I'm glad that it was, for the years between have shown me that it does a man no good to be free until he knows how to live, how to walk in step with God. — Elizabeth Yates

The hell with "love" anyway, and with every other phony, time-wasting, half-assed emotion in the world. — Richard Yates

He found it so easy and so pleasant to cry that he didn't try to stop for a while, until he realized he was forcing his sobs a little, exaggerating their depth with unnecessary shudders.
...
The whole point of crying is to quit before you coined it up. The whole point of grief itself was to cut it out while it was still honest, while it still meant something. Because the thing was so easily corrupted — Richard Yates

some things are too wonderful even for a child, and freedom's one of them — Elizabeth Yates

I have a 100 percent success rate on making it through the day. I don't expect today to be any different." She — Maisey Yates

He watched her with murderous distaste as she fumbled with her spoon. They had ordered ice cream, and some of it clung to her lips as she rolled a cold mouthful on her tongue. — Richard Yates

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

Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents' divorce. — Richard Yates

If you lived like a proletarian long enough, among proletarians, weren't you almost certain to become a proletarian too? — Richard Yates

He relaxed his hands, lifted one and tucked a strand of wispy blonde hair behind her ear. She didn't
move; she only looked at him. He wondered if she felt it too. — Maisey Yates

Celebrate your victories and mark your defeats. Ultimately documentary filmmaking is not a job, it's a calling. — Pamela Yates

In other words Yates had remembered the lesson of his first great master, Fitzgerald - namely, that people rarely say what they mean, and good dialogue is a matter of catching one's characters "in the very act of giving themselves away. — Blake Bailey

Then he was gone, and Prentice was alone in a silence that rang with all his shrill, unspoken words. He was so alone that the only thing to do was lie back on the bed and roll over and draw up his knees like an unborn baby, staring with dry eyes at a cluster of pink flowers on the wallpaper, knowing he had never been so alone in his life. — Richard Yates

Regardless, I did rise to the editorship before embarking on a freelance career in the late '60's. — Brock Yates

Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything expect their own comfortable God damn mediocrity. — Richard Yates

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

The movies were wonderful because they took you out of yourself, and at the same time they gave you a sense of being whole. Things of the world might serve to remind you at every turn that your life was snarled and perilously incomplete, that terror would never be far from possession of your heart, but those perceptions would nearly always vanish, if only for a little while, in the cool and nicely scented darkness of any movie house, anywhere. — Richard Yates

The path to added muscle is consuming more calories than the amount needed to keep your current bodyweight unchanged. — Dorian Yates

I like happy sets. Happy sets are good, and I think people feel comfortable on them. — David Yates

She bought a chocolate bar and it tasted surprisingly good - as if, without her knowing it, sitting here and eating this chocolate was the one thing she had wanted to do all day. — Richard Yates

I'm the ruler in my kingdom and my dark seat is hot. Step into my world and your heartbeat stop! — Aaron Dontez Yates

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

Want to know the biggest lie ever written? 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. What an unmitigated pile of shit. — Bart Yates

If you haven't written a novel by the time you're forty you never will! — Richard Yates

Didn't think she had, and that made her feel relieved he'd put a stop to it. Well, maybe not relieved. She — Maisey Yates

What the hell, Cade? You knew, and you never thought . . . 'Hey, maybe I should tell my
brother'?"
"No, Cole, I never thought that," Cade said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
"And why the hell not? — Maisey Yates

She stopped and watched, trying to catch a glimpse of the driver. She failed, but she figured it was too grand an entrance for someone who wanted to Freddy Kruger her, so she was probably good. — Maisey Yates

two Florida Highway Patrol cars and a third, black car pulled up in front of the house, and several white men emerged, among them the deputies Campbell and Yates. "Where is the guy that was with you last night?" Yates asked Shepherd, and what began with that question led to the beatings he and Irvin endured on the deserted clay road outside of Groveland. "They must have beat us about a half hour," Shepherd told the lawyers, who were at once riveted and appalled by his testimony. After the beating, he and Irvin were shoved back into the patrol car. Irvin's shirt was drenched in blood, and when he reached his hand up to his head he felt "a big chunk knocked out of it." A patrolman told them to scoot up to the edge of the seat so their blood wouldn't drip onto the upholstery. — Gilbert King

Every time a book opens, an angel coughs up a hairball. — Bart Yates

It reminded her too, time and again, of her own susceptibility to panic and her unfathomable dread of being alone. — Richard Yates

She quickly took a drink to hide her mouth. That mannerism had never changed: whenever Sarah was embarrassed, after she'd told a joke and was waiting for the laughter, or when she was afraid she'd talked too much, she would go for her mouth as if to cover nakedness - with Cokes or popsicles as a child, with drinks or cigarettes now. Maybe all the years of splayed, protruding teeth, and then of braces, had made her mouth the most vulnerable part of her for life. — Richard Yates