Acting might bring on emotional exhaustion, but writing tired your brains out. Writing led to depression and insomnia and walking around all day with a haggard look.
Richard YatesSynchronize watches at oh six hundred' says the infantry captain, and each of his huddled lieutenants finds respite from fear in the act of bringing two tiny pointers into jeweled alignment while tons of heavy artillery go fluttering overhead: the prosaic, civilian-looking dial of the watch has restored, however briefly, an illusion of personal control. Good, it counsels, looking tidily up from the hairs and veins of each terribly vulnerable wrist; fine: so far, everything's happening right on time.
Richard YatesAnd do you know a funny thing? I'm almost fifty years old and I've never understood anything in my whole life.
Richard Yates...his job was the very least important part of his life, never to be mentioned except in irony.
Richard YatesShe 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 Yates