Richard Russo Quotes - Page 3

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• Stories worked much the same way . . . A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation.

  Richard Russo

  Errors, Foundation, Stories

  Richard Russo (2010). “That Old Cape Magic”, p.85, Random House

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• You can be interested in a Jane Smiley novel whether or not anyone says a word. She enters into her characters thoughts with great understanding and depth.

  Richard Russo

  Character, Understanding, Depth

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• I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

  Richard Russo

  Sympathy, Book, Writing

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• A short story is something that I think can be intuited and envisioned and held in your mind almost at once.

  Richard Russo

  Thinking, Mind, Stories

  "Short Takes: Richard Russo On 2010's Best Stories". "All Things Considered" with Audie Cornish, www.npr.org. December 5, 2010.

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• When I start getting close to the end of a novel, something registers in the back of my mind for the next novel, so that I usually don't write, or take notes. And I certainly don't begin. I just allow things to percolate for a while.

  Richard Russo

  Writing, Mind, Next

  "Richard Russo on Painting a Canvas With His Novels". HBO interview, www.hbo.com.

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• I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted.

  Richard Russo

  Men, People, Want

  Richard Russo (2017). “Straight Man”, p.12, Atlantic Books

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• Even at its most perceptive, sociology deals in abstractions.

  Richard Russo

  Sociology, Deals, Sociological

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• HBO is really famous for hiring good people and staying out of their way until they ask for help, or need it. And that reputation is earned.

  Richard Russo

  Stay Strong, Hbo, People

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• People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny.

  Richard Russo

  Funny Things, People, Ask Me

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• I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody's fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about.

  Richard Russo

  Thinking, Fiction, Easier

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• I was pretty dead set against ever writing an academic novel. It's always been my view that there are already more than enough academic novels and that most of them aren't any good. Most of them are self-conscious and bitter, the work of people who want to settle grudges.

  Richard Russo

  Writing, Self, Views

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• My dad had this rock hard body and would work 12- to 13-hour days. The guys he worked with were scrap-iron guys. Nobody on that road crew had read a book in 10 years, but there was something about the way they lived I really admired.

  Richard Russo

  Dad, Book, Iron

  "Russo: Novelist, fan of first books". Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.boston.com. October 9, 2011.

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• The world is divided between kids who grow up wanting to be their parents and those like us, who grow up wanting to be anything but. Neither group ever succeeds.

  Richard Russo

  Growing Up, Kids, Parent

  FaceBook post by Richard Russo from Aug 28, 2014

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• A lot of my characters in all of my books have a self-destructive urge. They'll do precisely the thing that they know is wrong, take a perverse delight in doing the wrong thing.

  Richard Russo

  Book, Character, Self

  FaceBook post by Richard Russo from May 29, 2011

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• I told him the truth, that I loved him and didn't regret anything about our lives together. But do we ever 'tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God' as my father used to say, to those we love? Or even to ourselves? Don't even the best and most fortunate of lives hint at other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too? Isn't this why we can't help feeling cheated, even when we know we haven't been?

  Richard Russo

  Regret, Father, Feelings

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• I looked back at some of my earlier published stories with genuine horror and remorse. I got thinking, How many extant copies might there be, who owns them, and do they keep their doors locked?

  Richard Russo

  Thinking, Doors, Stories

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• By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.

  Richard Russo

  Writing, America, People

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• If my career continues along its current arc, people will probably look at me and see a writer who is obsessed with the relationship between rich and poor and with how the rich somehow or other always manage to betray the poor, even when they don't mean to.

  Richard Russo

  Betrayal, Mean, Careers

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• I read pretty voraciously. If it's good, I don't care what it is.

  Richard Russo

  Beauty, Care, Ifs

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• I’ve always known that there’s more going on inside me than finds its way into the world, but this is probably true of everyone. Who doesn’t regret that he isn’t more fully understood?

  Richard Russo

  Regret, World, Way

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• Sleep is over-rated. Have you ever noticed how it's always recommended to people anybody with half a brain can see need to wake up?

  Richard Russo

  Sleep, People, Brain

  Richard Russo (2017). “Mohawk”, p.155, Atlantic Books

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• When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that's the end. Here's another who's never going to write well again.

  Richard Russo

  Writing, Fiction, Assuming

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• Who but an English professor would threaten to kill a duck a day and hold up a goose as an example?

  Richard Russo

  Ducks, Example, Professors

  Richard Russo (2017). “Straight Man”, p.151, Atlantic Books

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• To his surprise he also discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something, whether painting or poetry, that you cared about a great deal.

  Richard Russo

  Littles, Painting, Surprise

  Richard Russo (2017). “Empire Falls”, p.16, Atlantic Books

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• One of the nice things about our marriage, at least to my way of thinking, is that my wife and I no longer have to argue every thing through. We each know what the other will say, and so the saying becomes an unnecessary formality. No doubt some marriage counselor would explain to us that our problem is a failure to communicate, but to my way of thinking we've worked long and hard to achieve this silence, Lily's and mine, so fraught with mutual understanding.

  Richard Russo

  Nice, Thinking, Long

  Richard Russo (2017). “Straight Man”, p.54, Atlantic Books

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