Richard Russo Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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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• 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

  8 Copy quote

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

  Richard Russo

  Sociology, Deals, Sociological

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• I can be glib and truthful all at once.

  Richard Russo

  Truthful, I Can

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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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• Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.

  Richard Russo

  Beautiful, Ruins, Masterpiece

  "Jess Walter" by Robert Birnbaum, themorningnews.org. August 6, 2012.

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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

  9 Copy quote

• Steve Yarbrough's Safe from the Neighbors will take your breath away. Ambitious, funny, sad, smart, and beautifully crafted, it's everything a novel should be.

  Richard Russo

  Smart, Ambitious, Safe

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• I think it would be harder for me not to write comedy because the comic view of things is the one that comes most naturally to me.

  Richard Russo

  Writing, Thinking, 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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• 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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• Some authors have a very hard time understanding that in order to be faithful to the spirit of the book, it's almost always impossible to remain faithful to the text. You have to make changes.

  Richard Russo

  Book, Hard Times, Order

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• Cary Grant never won an Oscar, primarily, I suspect, because he made everything look so effortless. Why reward someone for having fun, for being charming?

  Richard Russo

  Fun, Looks, Oscars

  "Failbetter" Interview, www.failbetter.com.

  9 Copy quote

• 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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• I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.

  Richard Russo

  Running, Worry, Dry

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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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• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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