Blake Bailey

“All you ought to be worrying about now is order (not about how to impose it on chaos, wish is the opposite of art, but about how to bring it out of chaos, which is art itself). And your worrying about this ought not to be a tortured thing - God knows there's enough torture growing wild in everybody's life so that nobody in his right mind needs to cultivate it - but a serene thing. Don't, in other words, jazz yourself up into a nervous wreck. Be quiet, be as sane as you can, and let the work come out of you. If it's to come, it will; if it's not, no amount of self-induced frenzy is going to hep it along.
One final piece of solemn, teacherly advice, and I do mean this: Try to like yourself a little better.”
― Richard Yates letter to Peter Narajian excerpted in A Tragic Honesty by Blake Bialey

“Vevers remarked on what struck them as Yates's peculiar attitude toward women: 'He expected them to drink a lot and be beautiful all the time.”
― Blake Bailey, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates