Richard Ford
Richard Ford
Richard Fordis an American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land and Let Me Be Frank with You, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 February 1944
CityJackson, MS
CountryUnited States of America
rights america people
America beats on you so hard the whole time. You are constantly being pummeled by other people's rights and their sense of patriotism.
mind logical orderly
I don't have a very logical and orderly mind.
brain obsessive-compulsive disorder
I had a Tourette's period. And obsessive compulsive disorder. Things would get in my brain that I couldn't get out of my brain.
believe mean years
It's been my habit of mind, over these years, to understand that every situation in which human beings are involved can be turned on its head. Everything someone assures me to be true might not be. Every pillar of belief the world rests on may or may not be about to explode. Most things don't stay the way they are very long. Knowing this, however, has not made me cynical. Cynical means believing that good isn't possible; and I know for a fact that good is. I simply take nothing for granted and try to be ready for the change that's soon to come.
heart stories crafts
At heart, of course, a story itself is consolation's instrument.
fall loss tree
It is no loss to mankind when one writer decides to call it a day. When a tree falls in the forest, who cares but the monkeys?
divorce feel-better night
For a time after my divorce everything began to seem profoundly ironic to me. I found myself thinking of other peoples' worries as sources of amusement and private derision which I thought about at night to make myself feel better.
mother children father
They may already know too much about their mother and father--nothing being more factual than divorce, where so much has to be explained and worked through intelligently (though they have tried to stay equable). I've noticed this is often the time when children begin calling their parents by their first names, becoming little ironists after their parents' faults. What could be lonelier for a parent than to be criticized by his child on a first-name basis?
cutting two people
Humans generally get out the gist of what they need to say right at the beginning, then spend forever qualifying, contradicting, burnishing or taking important things back. Yor rareley miss anything by cutting most people off after two sentences.
stars real light
At the exact moment any decision seems to be being made, it's usually long after the real decision was actually made--like light we see emitted from stars.
life running long
Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.
loss simple chance
What I know is, you have chance in life--of surviving it--if you tolerate loss well; manage not to be a cynic through it all; to subordinate, as Ruskin implied, to keep proportion, to connect the unequal things into a whole that preserves the good, even if admittedly good is often not simple to find.
long way take-nothing-for-granted
Most things don't stay the way they are very long.
empty
Life's passed along to us empty. We have to make up the happiness part.