Peter De Vries
Peter De Vries
Peter De Vrieswas an American editor and novelist known for his satiric wit. He has been described by the philosopher Daniel Dennett as "probably the funniest writer on religion ever"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 February 1910
CountryUnited States of America
family children humorous
There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you.
father hate waiting
My father hated radio and could not wait for television to be invented so he could hate that too.
may stuff irony
Human nature is pretty shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.
sports earth cooperation
We are not primarily put on this earth to see through one another, but to see one another through.
soul tweed coats
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.
hate hate-me
Everybody hates me because I'm so universally liked.
nature science world
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.
loss order law
The idea of a Supreme Being who creates a world in which one creature is designed to eat another in order to subsist, and then pass a law saying, "Thou shalt not kill," is so monstrously, immeasurably, bottomlessly absurd that I am at a loss to understand how mankind has entertained or given it house room all this long.
funny summer school
I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.
ideas people despair
What baffles me is the comfort people find in the idea that somebody dealt this mess. Blind and meaningless chance seems to me so much more congenial - or at least less horrible. Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair.
past nostalgia used
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
eye track shrinking
When I see a paragraph shrinking under my eyes like a strip of bacon in a skillet, I know I'm on the right track.
relationship anniversary marriage
The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds - they mature slowly.
writing drunk discipline
Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk. But you have to have both elements in creation — the Apollonian and the Dionysian, or spontaneity and restraint, emotion and discipline.