Richard Russo Quotes

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All quotes by Richard Russo: Books Character Feelings Heart Understanding Writing more...
  • I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody's fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about.

  • That afternoon I came to understand that one of the deepest purposes of intellectual sophistication is to provide distance between us and our most disturbing personal truths and gnawing fears.

    "Straight Man: A Novel". Book by Richard Russo, 1997.
  • I get and read an enormous number of first novels.

    "Russo: Novelist, fan of first books". Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.boston.com. October 9, 2011.
  • 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 on Painting a Canvas With His Novels". HBO interview, www.hbo.com.
  • I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.

  • They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving.

  • Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don't have to go looking for it.

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

  • People who imagine themselves to be self-made seldom enjoy examining the process of manufacture in detail.

    Richard Russo (2017). “Empire Falls”, p.204, Atlantic Books
  • 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?

  • One of the odd things about middle age, he concluded, was the strange decisions a man discovers he's made by not really making them, like allowing friends to drift away through simple neglect.

    FaceBook post by Richard Russo from Aug 17, 2010
  • When you don't know what to do, try something; if that doesn't work, try something else.

  • 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 (2017). “Mohawk”, p.155, Atlantic Books
  • Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.

  • 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.

    FaceBook post by Richard Russo from Aug 28, 2014
  • People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny.

  • 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.

    "Russo: Novelist, fan of first books". Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.boston.com. October 9, 2011.
  • You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

  • Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression 'I have to say', what follows usually needn't be said?

  • 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.

  • Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me.

    "Richard Russo on Painting a Canvas With His Novels". HBO Interview, www.hbo.com.
  • I can be glib and truthful all at once.

  • The line of gray along the horizon is brighter now, and with the coming light I feel a certainty: that there is, despite our wild imaginings, only one life. The ghostly others, no matter how real they seem, no matter how badly we need them, are phantoms. The one life we're left with is sufficient to fill and refill our imperfect hearts with joy, and then to shatter them. And it never, ever lets up.

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

    Richard Russo (2017). “Straight Man”, p.151, Atlantic Books
  • I read pretty voraciously. If it's good, I don't care what it is.

  • It's possible to overlook character flaws of in-laws for the simple reason that you feel neither responsible for them nor genetically implicated.

    Richard Russo (2017). “Straight Man”, p.254, Atlantic Books
  • 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.

    FaceBook post by Richard Russo from May 29, 2011
  • I want that which is hilarious and that which is heartbreaking to occupy the same territory in the book because I think they very often occupy the same territory in life, much as we try to separate them.

  • The other possibility was that there was no right thing to say, that the choice wasn't between right and wrong but between wrong, more wrong, and as wrong as you can get.

    Richard Russo (2017). “Empire Falls”, p.137, Atlantic Books
  • 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 (2017). “Empire Falls”, p.16, Atlantic Books
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 97 quotes from the Novelist Richard Russo, starting from July 15, 1949! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
    Richard Russo quotes about: Books Character Feelings Heart Understanding Writing