Yglesias Think 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

Nobody knows the trouble you've seen - and nobody wants to. — Helen 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

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

I'm a liberal - I believe in subsidies for public goods and in regulations to curb harmful externalities, but neither of those things exist when it comes to parking. — Matthew Yglesias

Ultimately, I think the United States is a pretty awesome country but it very plausibly would have been even awesomer had English and American political leaders in the late 18th century been farsighted enough to find compromises that would have held the empire together. — Matthew 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

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

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

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

Something about Christmas decorations inspired delinquency. — 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

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

Life disappoints. Everybody knows that. But must it horrify? — Helen Yglesias

In practice, US officials seem to know better than to indulge in the patriotic myth that our constitution is the greatest system of government ever devised. — Matthew Yglesias

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

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

A system in which legal police shootings of unarmed civilians are a common occurrence is a system that has some serious flaws. In this case, the drawback is a straightforward consequence of America's approach to firearms. A well-armed citizenry required an even-better-armed constabulary. Widespread gun ownership creates a systematic climate of fear on the part of the police. The result is a quantity of police shootings that, regardless of the facts of any particular case, is just staggeringly high. Young black men, in particular, are paying the price for America's gun culture. — Matthew 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

I think Matt Yglesias is wrong to declare that the world of 'This Town' is dying, unless he thinks publicly financed elections, strict lobbying bans and Scandinavian-style wealth distribution are imminent. — Alex Pareene

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

Near or far, there are burdens and terrors in sisterhood, and perhaps the nearer, the more complicated. — Helen 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

It's rare that you have a policy issue that can be solved by throwing more money at the problem, but the technology to make bus service more frequent and equip buses with GPS systems that provide real-time schedule updates to bus stops exists and operates in many parts of the world. We should be installing it in our major cities. — Matthew 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

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