Richard Russo Quotes

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Richard Russo

Profession : Novelist

Birth : July 15, 1949

I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody's fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about.

Richard Russo

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

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.

Richard Russo

Even at its most perceptive, sociology deals in abstractions.

Richard Russo

I think a lot of what is going on with kids who get pushed too far and attempt either murder or suicide is that they are trying to deal with their own non-existence for the people who are supposed to care most for them.

Richard Russo

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

Richard Russo

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

By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.

Richard Russo

I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.

Richard Russo

I don't think there's a shortage of material in the world. Or in my head. I just pray for continued good health, because I've got other stories to tell.

Richard Russo

I think it would be harder for me not to write comedy because the comic view of things is the one that comes most naturally to me.

Richard Russo

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

Richard Russo

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

Richard Russo

I was pretty dead set against ever writing an academic novel. It's always been my view that there are already more than enough academic novels and that most of them aren't any good. Most of them are self-conscious and bitter, the work of people who want to settle grudges.

Richard Russo

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.

Richard Russo

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.

Richard Russo

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

Richard Russo

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

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

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

Richard Russo