Richard Russo
Richard Russo
Richard Russois an American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and teacher...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth15 July 1949
CountryUnited States of America
funny-things people ask-me
People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny.
writing mind next
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.
men people want
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.
self people details
People who imagine themselves to be self-made seldom enjoy examining the process of manufacture in detail.
real heart light
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.
character simple law
It's possible to overlook character flaws of in-laws for the simple reason that you feel neither responsible for them nor genetically implicated.
destiny cities people
People in small towns, much more than in cities, share a destiny.
memories book thinking
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.
thinking looks odd
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.
taken fighting humanity
He looks like he could be taken in a fight. Not by me, but by somebody. Not anyone in Humanities, probably.
heart world leap
Was anything in the world truer than that intuitive leap of the heart?
errors stories way
Stories worked much the same way . . . A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation.
betrayal mean careers
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.
past focus odd
Odd that the future should be so difficult to bring into focus when the past, uninvited, offered itself up so easily for inspection.