A Special Providence Quotes

“Why couldn't she stop talking? Did all lonely people have that problem?”
― Richard Yates, A Special Providence

“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, A Special Providence

“It always seemed to me," she said at last, "that it must require a great deal of courage to be an artist, if only because the creative process is such a lonely one. I should imagine it must be all the more difficult for a woman.”
― Richard Yates, A Special Providence

“Whoever said you can't love ridiculous things? God knows i love you, and you're the most ridiculous woman I ever met!”
― Richard Yates, A Special Providence

“He had proved nothing, he had made no viable gesture of atonement, and he knew now that he probably never would. If he could have talked with Quint's ghost now he could only have said: "I'm sorry; there's nothing more I can do."
And Quint, he knew, would have said: "Right; you're absolutely right about that. (...)"
How then could he feel so good. What possible right did he have to be at peace with himself?
He didn't know. All he knew that day (...) all he knew with any clarity was that he was nineteen years old, that the war was over, and that he was alive.”
― Richard Yates, A Special Providence

“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, A Special Providence

“Sometimes in dreams there are visions of the past. For that reason Alice Prentice had always welcomed sleep, but she suffered an insomniac's dread of the time just before sleeping, the act of falling asleep itself, the perilous twilight of semi-awareness when the mind must struggle for coherence, when a siren or a cry in the street is the very sound of terror and the ticking of the clock is a steady reminder of death.”
― Richard Yates, A Special Providence

“I don't think about growing old," she said.

"I know you don't. That's one of the things I admire about you, Alice. You have some kind of boundless faith in the future. You never give up."

"I suppose I'm an optimist.”
― Richard Yates, A Special Providence

“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, A Special Providence

“She was fifty-three years old and lonely and oppressed; why couldn't he let her have her illusions? That was what her wounded, half-drunken eyes had seemed to be saying throughout his interrogation: Why can't I have my illusions?
Because they're lies, he told her silently in his mind as he champed his jaws and swallowed the cheap food. Everything you say is a lie.(...) Everything you live by is a lie, and you want to know what the truth is?
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.
Do you want to know what the truth is? The truth is that your fingernails are all broken and black because you're working as a laborer and God knows how we're ever going to get you out of that lens-grinding shop. The truth is that I'm a private in the infantry and I'm probably going to get my head blown off. The truth is, I don't really want to be sitting here at all, eating this goddam ice cream and letting you talk yourself drunk while all my time runs out. The truth is, I wish I'd taken my pass to Lynchburg today and gone to a whorehouse. That's the truth.”
― Richard Yates, A Special Providence