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"Yeah, well, sure, 'remarkably intelligent'. Look, baby, the world is crawling with these diamond-in-the-rough types, these salt-of-the-earth characters, and they're all remarkably intelligent. My God, I knew half-literate guys in the Army who could scare the shit out of you with their intelligence."

— Richard Yates Young Hearts Crying (1984)

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More quotes by Richard Yates

It seemed only a few minutes later that he woke with a sense that the world was coming apart.

Disturbing the Peace (1975)

One advantage of the very low lighting in this room, he'd decided, was that it could make almost any girl look like a million dollars.

Cold Spring Harbor (1986)

Could a person really be cynical about everything in the world and still expect to have friends?

A Good School (1978)

"Try to remember this, men. The mark of a professional in any line of work - I mean any line of work - is that he can make difficult things look easy."

Young Hearts Crying (1984)

Sumbitch wasn't even needed, that's the funny part; just some eager-beaver bastard couldn't mind his own business.

A Special Providence (1969)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Richard Yates (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.