Richard Russo Quotes (19 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Works

Straight Man

Richard Russo

Empire Falls

Richard Russo

Mohawk

Richard Russo

Straight Man

Richard Russo

Empire Falls

Richard Russo

Mohawk

Richard Russo

Richard Russo: 19 quotes0 likes

Famous Richard Russo Quotes

“I'll tell you one thing, though. It's a terrible thing to be a disappointment to a good woman.”

Richard Russo

“What I discovered I liked best about striking out on my bicycle was that the farther I got from home, the more interesting and unusual my thoughts became.”

Richard Russo

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

Richard Russo book Bridge of Sighs

Source: Bridge of Sighs

“What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?”

Richard Russo Empire Falls

Source: Empire Falls

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

Richard Russo

“Which is why we have spouses and children and parents and colleagues and friends, because someone has to know us better than we know ourselves. We need them to tell us. We need them to say, "I know you, Al. You are not the kind of man who.”

Richard Russo book Straight Man

Source: Straight Man

Richard Russo Quotes about people

“People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.”

Richard Russo book Mohawk

Source: Mohawk

“After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble.”

Richard Russo Empire Falls

Source: Empire Falls

“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. And, of course, my idea of entertaining might not be yours. I'm in complete agreement with all those people who say, regarding movies, "I just want to be entertained." This populist position is much derided by my academic colleagues as simpleminded and unsophisticated, evidence of questionable analytical and critical acuity. But I agree with the premise, and I too just want to be entertained. That I am almost never entertained by what entertains other people who just want to be entertained doesn't make us philosophically incompatible. It just means we shouldn't go to movies together.”

Richard Russo book Straight Man

Prologue.
Straight Man (1997)

“Were it not for Occam's Razor, which always demands simplicity, I'd be tempted to believe that human beings are more influenced by distant causes than immediate ones. This would especially be true of overeducated people, who are capable of thinking past the immediate, of becoming obsessed by the remote. It's the old stuff, the conflicts we've never come to terms with, that sneaks up on us, half forgotten, insisting upon action.”

Richard Russo book Straight Man

Source: Straight Man (1997), Ch. 2.

“I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end, the comic’s best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he’s doing is easy is an occupational hazard. 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? In "serious" fiction (as in "serious" film) you can feel the weight of the material. You expect to see the effort and the strain of all that heavy lifting, and we reward the effort as much as the success. Comedy is often just as serious, and to ignore that seriousness is misguided, of course, but most writers with comic world views have accustomed themselves to being sold at a discount. Most of us wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Richard Russo

Interview with Richard Russo, Failbetter.com, Volume II, Issue III, Summer/Fall 2001, September 24, 2009 http://www.failbetter.com/04/Russo.htm,

“"Harold and I tried to plant new trees, but they won't take because of the roots. You got to dig up the old stumps and they go way down. It cost a lot and the roots go everywhere. Under the streets and the lawns. We got them in our cellar. And you seen the sidewalks." I said I had. "You'd like to plant a tree or two, but where?" "The roots will die eventually," I said, trying to be optimistic, since she really wanted to plant trees. "That's what I said. Harold says no. He says they just petrify there in the ground, making it impossible for anything alive to find root and grab ahold. 'Course Harold is a sourpuss. I think sometimes he just says things like that so he won't have to go out and try. Some people would rather do without trees than dig a little hole."”

Richard Russo book The Risk Pool

Source: The Risk Pool (1986), Chapter 42.

Richard Russo Quotes

“And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don't take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.”

Richard Russo Empire Falls

Source: Empire Falls

“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 Empire Falls

Source: Empire Falls

“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.”

Richard Russo book Straight Man

Epilogue.
Straight Man (1997)

“When I went to Spain, right after the Pulitzer I encountered Spanish journalists who are very different from American journalists. One way is that they are all very political. They want their writers to be very political. The first journalist that I met when I was there asked "Are you going to use your prize for political purposes?" I said, "Good Lord, no, I wouldn’t trade on it—I’m a professional liar. I tell stories. I make things up." They were appalled. They made it very clear to me that that was the wrong answer and that it was further evidence of what was wrong with American authors and Americans, in general, was that we were insular. Which we are. And that we were not bearing our responsibilities in the world. And that fame that is ours has been wasted on people like us because we won’t use it for good purposes. American writers are probably far more insular than we should be, nevertheless I am very much of the other persuasion. That people should not talk about what they don’t know.”

Richard Russo

“At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don’t really think of myself as "writing humor." I’m simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious. Here’s the thing. Most of what we witness in life is too complex to take in whole. Because of this we unconsciously edit what we see, select what to really record and what to ignore, which is why people who look at the same thing don’t necessarily see the same thing… Comic writers don’t so much invent funny things as strip away the distractions, the impediments to laughter.”

Richard Russo

“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 book Straight Man

Source: Straight Man (1997), Ch. 2.

“One life isn't enough”

Richard Russo

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Similar authors

Sinclair Lewis136

American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright None

F. Scott Fitzgerald411

American novelist and screenwriter None

George Raymond Richard Martin35

American writer, screenwriter and television producer None

W. Somerset Maugham158

British playwright, novelist, short story writer None

Rudyard Kipling200

English short-story writer, poet, and novelist None