Richard Russo Quotes

I'm delighted by how Nobody's Fool turned out. It was a rare movie.
Richard Russo

Fool, Movie, Nobody

I've never written nearly as much about place as people seem to think I do. I just write about class.
Richard Russo

Place, Write, Seem

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

Mean, Career, Rich

If there's an enduring theme in my work, it's probably the effects of class on American life.
Richard Russo

Life, Work, American

If you work at comedy too laboriously, you can kill what's funny in the joke.
Richard Russo

Funny, Work, Joke

It's no secret that in my books I'm trying to make the comic and the serious rub up against each other just as closely and uncomfortably as I can.
Richard Russo

Trying, Serious, Against

Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that.
Richard Russo

Time, Movies, Together

My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.
Richard Russo

May, Sometimes, Sense

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

Work, Dad, Rock

Not everyone writes well from a child's point of view.
Richard Russo

Everyone, Child, Point

People in small towns, much more than in cities, share a destiny.
Richard Russo

Small, Destiny, Share

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

Funny, Often, Ask

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

Time, Book, Hard

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

Hope, Structure, Reveal

The deepest failures any fiction writer is likely to have are failures of not quite comprehending the truth of the story that he or she is telling.
Richard Russo

Truth, She, Story

Truth be told, 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

Truth, Experience, Easy

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

Find, Looking, Theme

Usually by the time I finish a book tour I've just about had it with the book.
Richard Russo

Time, Book, Finish

What comes easiest for me is dialogue. Sometimes when my characters are speaking to me, I have to slow them down so that I'm not simply taking dictation.
Richard Russo

Down, Sometimes, Simply

What does it feel like to be a parent? What does it feel like to be a child? And that's what stories do. They bring you there. They offer a dramatic explanation, which is always different from an expository explanation.
Richard Russo

Different, Child, Parent

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

End, Another, Here

When I look back over my novels what I find is that when I think I'm finished with a theme, I'm generally not. And usually themes will recur from novel to novel in odd, new guises.
Richard Russo

Find, Novel, Finished

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

Mind, End, Start

Writers are people who put pen to paper every day.
Richard Russo

Put, Writers, Paper

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

Great, Thoughts, Her

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Biography

Nationality: American

Born: July 15, 1949

Links

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