Peter De Vries's Quotes

The tuba is certainly the most intestinal of instruments, the very lower bowel of music.

The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.

When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.

Words fashioned with somewhat over precise diction are like shapes turned out by a cookie cutter.

Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.

The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds - they mature slowly.

The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.

Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

We are not primarily put on this earth to see through one another, but to see one another through.

Everybody hates me because I'm so universally liked.

Celibacy is the worst form of self-abuse.

The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance.

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

A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.

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

Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff - it is a palliative rather than a remedy.

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.

It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.

Murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.

The rich aren't like us, they pay less taxes.

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