Know what we did, Lucy? You and me? We spent our whole lives yearning. Isn't that the God damndest thing?
Richard YatesRead
Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Recognizing hopelessness requires courage and deep introspection.
Richard Yates highlights the profound perception of emptiness that many people recognize but often shy away from confronting the accompanying hopelessness. It takes a certain strength to acknowledge not just a lack of fulfillment, but the realization that there may be no hope for change or improvement.
Themes
HopelessnessEmptinessCouragePerceptionIntrospection
In practice
Example use cases
A discussion about the importance of emotional honesty in a therapy session.
More from Richard Yates
All quotes →She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents nor Aunt Claire nor Frank nor anyone else had ever had to teach her: that if you wanted something to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.
Richard YatesRead
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 YatesRead
Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love.
Richard YatesRead
It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity.
Richard YatesRead
She just happened to feel like it. Wasn’t that after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?
Richard YatesRead
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