Latest Richard Ford Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The past is the prism through which we see a great, great, great deal of ourselves; it's a useful prism. It doesn't mean that we're fascinated by the dead or that we're fascinated by things that are settled. It is just one place where we can go to understand ourselves in the present.

  Richard Ford

  Mean, Past

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Until you can become accountable to yourself and only yourself, you're probably not going to live a fully vital life. So much of literature is about accountability. The moral issues in most novels are about people becoming responsible for their own behaviour. One of the forces against being responsible for your own behaviour is the force of the past, in the way that the past tries to form you.

  Richard Ford

  Past, People, Accountability

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• The way in which sports focuses more on the peccadilloes, lives and putative personalities of athletes and less on the finer points of playing games, I've become less interested in it. I don't want to write sports profiles.

  Richard Ford

  Sports, Writing, Athlete

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Someone wanted me to write a profile for ESPN about the commissioner of baseball, and I said, "He's just some suit! Some Republican. No!" I mean if you want me to write about baseball, boxing or football, I'll write about those things because I watch them, I think about them a lot and I like them. But I don't want to write about Barry Bonds.

  Richard Ford

  Baseball, Football, Writing

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Marrying the right girl is even more imperative today than it was when I was 23 years old because it's so much harder to get on as an imaginative writer like me now. You need to have somebody who believes in what you're doing and who never is skeptical about what you're doing. My wife thought it was a great thing for me to be a writer because in practical terms it freed her to do what she wanted to do, which was work.

  Richard Ford

  Girl, Believe, Wife

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Even though I get a lot done with my solitude, and I make the best use of it possible, I always think solitude is an interlude in a period of time, which is populated by others.

  Richard Ford

  Thinking, Solitude, Done

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• It is right that you have to have a tolerance for solitude. But when that solitude bears fruit, you can abandon it. You can be in the company of others.

  Richard Ford

  Tolerance, Solitude, Abandon

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Some people think that writers are innately solitary and that there's a kind of romance to that solitariness. I tend to think that what writers really want to do is get accepted into things. They want to get accepted into society, into culture, into intelligentsia, into the fun. Writing is their mechanism, their instrument, for doing that.

  Richard Ford

  Fun, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Being a slow reader would normally be a deficiency; I found a way to make it an asset. I began to sound words and see all those qualities - in a way it made words more precious to me. Since so much of what happens in the world between human beings has to do with the inconsideration of language, with the imprecision of language, with language leaving our mouths unmediated, one thing which was sensuous and visceral led to, in the use of language, a moral gesture. It was about trying to use language to both exemplify and articulate what good is.

  Richard Ford

  Leaving, Trying, Quality

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Paul Ryan, he is the real evil genius of the Republican party. He with his little hateful widow's peak and his smirky, snarly, simpering non-entity self, that's who I detest. Trump's just a moron, but Ryan is ugly and evil.

  Richard Ford

  Real, Party, Evil

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Paul Ryan's just a really, deeply evil little creature. But he's not little; he's actually quite tall, I'm sorry to see. I'm always sorry when really bad guys are tall.

  Richard Ford

  Sorry, Evil, Guy

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• I want saner gun laws. I think all these automatic weapons should be banned, big clips and handguns should be banned. As far as I'm concerned, shotguns and hunting weapons are all that we should allow in America.

  Richard Ford

  Gun, Thinking, Hunting

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• There are more people in America that love guns and want guns for themselves and everyone else than there are not. It is also true that liberals who don't want guns are puny by and large. They're not risking anything, all they're doing is saying they don't like something. Liberals are quick to say this should happen and this should not happen, but they don't do anything about it much.

  Richard Ford

  Gun, People

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Americans don't have saner gun laws because most Americans, including those citizens who puzzle over better angels, don't want saner gun laws.

  Richard Ford

  Angel, Gun, Puzzles

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• If Trump was just a piddly-ass little hotel owner some place, having the kind of character and manners that he has, he would not be worth our notice. But because he's now been based to this huge stage, then his dimensions become immense. He's not a tragic figure because he doesn't have the capacity to be tragic. But the consequences of his life and his self now are immense; they're threatening to the world and to the sanctity of human life.

  Richard Ford

  Character, World, Kind

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• The National Rifle Association is a domestic terrorist organization that tacitly supports the killing of children more than it supports reasoned gun legislation.

  Richard Ford

  Children, Gun, Support

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• I think that's the thing that memoir can do more than anything it does; it testifies and bears witness to the existence of people whose lives, pleasures and virtues would never have been testified to without my having done it. That makes me really glad.

  Richard Ford

  Thinking, People, Done

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• We're all hoping that Trump doesn't get our world on his terms because there won't be anything of it left. Trump is a true psychopath, a psychopath in the way that tragedy becomes tragedy.

  Richard Ford

  Tragedy, World, Psychopath

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• I wouldn't be a very good writer if someone hadn't taught me how to read.

  Richard Ford

  Taught, Very Good, Good Writers

  "Richard Ford: Pulitzer winner, focused reader". Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. September 15, 2012.

• I grew up in Mississippi being told it was a great place, but not feeling that. When I finally began reading seriously, literature showed me something about where I was from which was worthwhile.

  Richard Ford

  Reading, Feelings, Literature

  "Richard Ford: Pulitzer winner, focused reader". Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. September 15, 2012.

• When I write a novel I start each morning by reading for 20 minutes.

  Richard Ford

  Morning, Reading, Writing

  "Richard Ford: Pulitzer winner, focused reader". Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. September 15, 2012.

• To write you had to read so I backed into reading.

  Richard Ford

  Reading, Writing

  "Richard Ford: Pulitzer winner, focused reader". Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. September 15, 2012.

• I didn't read a serious book until I was 19.

  Richard Ford

  Book, Serious

  "Richard Ford: Pulitzer winner, focused reader". Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. September 15, 2012.

• I went to college to study hospitality. I quickly got out of that and realized that what I liked to do was write.

  Richard Ford

  Writing, College, Study

  "Richard Ford: Pulitzer winner, focused reader". Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. September 15, 2012.

• I don't want to be taken to Bhutan and smell the flowers. I want to be told something I couldn't have been told any other way.

  Richard Ford

  Flower, Taken, Bhutan

  "Richard Ford: Pulitzer winner, focused reader". Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. September 15, 2012.