Richard Russo Quotes

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Richard Russo

Profession : Novelist

Birth : July 15, 1949

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

Richard Russo

A couple years ago, the novelist Russell Banks told me he was reading the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. I asked why. He said, 'Because I've always wanted to and am tired of having my reading assigned.' I thought it was a marvelous declaration of independence.

Richard Russo

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

About 15 years ago I went though a period of a year or so when I just couldn't find anything good. My wife noticed I was having trouble reading menus. I bought some cheap reading glasses in a drug store. I got home and suddenly all these books that weren't good were good.

Richard Russo

I get and read an enormous number of first novels.

Richard Russo

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?

Richard Russo

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

Richard Russo

Writers are people who put pen to paper every day.

Richard Russo

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

I don't think America has ever had a center the way London is the center of England or Dublin is the center of Ireland.

Richard Russo

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

Richard Russo