"Pain is the question mark turned like a fishhook in the human heart." -- Peter De Vries
Peter De Vries (February 27, 1910 - September 28, 1993) was 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"
"A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.""Celibacy is the worst form of self-abuse.""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.""Everybody hates me because I'm so universally liked.""Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.""I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.""I wanted to be bored to death, as good a way to go as any.""I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.""I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.""It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.""Let us hope, that a kind Providence will put a speedy end to the acts of God under which we have been laboring.""Life is a zoo in a jungle.""Murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.""My father hated radio and could not wait for television to be invented so he could hate that too.""Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.""The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds - they mature slowly.""The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.""The murals in restaurants are on par with the food in museums.""The rich aren't like us, they pay less taxes.""The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance.""The tuba is certainly the most intestinal of instruments, the very lower bowel of music.""The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.""The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.""There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you.""We are not primarily put on this earth to see through one another, but to see one another through.""We must love one another, yes, yes, that's all true enough, but nothing says we have to like each other.""When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.""Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.""Words fashioned with somewhat over precise diction are like shapes turned out by a cookie cutter."
De Vries was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1910. He was educated in Dutch Christian Reformed Church schools, graduating from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1931. He also studied at Northwestern University. He supported himself with a number of different jobs, including those of vending machine operator, toffee-apple salesman, radio actor in the 1930s, and editor for Poetry magazine from 1938 to 1944.
He joined the staff of The New Yorker magazine at the insistence of James Thurber and worked there from 1944 to 1987, writing stories and touching up cartoon captions. He had four children with wife Katinka Loeser; Jon, Derek, Jan, and Emily, who died at the age of 10 of leukemia. This experience provided the inspiration for his 1961 work, The Blood of the Lamb.
A prolific writer, De Vries wrote short stories, reviews, poetry, essays, a play, novellas, and twenty-three novels. Films made from De Vries's novels include The Tunnel of Love (1958), which also was a successful Broadway play; How Do I Love Thee? (1970, based on Let Me Count the Ways); Pete 'n' Tillie (1972, based on Witch’s Milk); and Reuben, Reuben (1970), which also inspired a Broadway play, Spofford. Although he enjoyed success for five decades, all his novels were out of print by the time of his death.
De Vries received an honorary degree in 1979 from Susquehanna University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 1983.
He died September 28, 1993, aged 83, in Norwalk, Connecticut.
