Quote

Maturity, as I conceived it, was recognizing what was bad or peculiar in life, admitting it has to stay that way, and going ahead with the best of things.

Richard Ford

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Richard Ford
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: February 16
Novelist
Writer
Jackson
Mississippi
Stay
Best
Going
Admitting
Way
Conceived
Things
Recognizing
Life
Maturity
Peculiar
Ahead

More quotes by Richard Ford

Image
I didn't feel up to writing about 9/11. If I were to write about it, it would take me years.
Richard Ford
Image
At heart, of course, a story itself is consolation's instrument.
Richard Ford
Image
I don't want to be taken to Bhutan and smell the flowers. I want to be told something I couldn't have been told any other way.
Richard Ford
Image
Theres a lot to be said for doing what youre not supposed to do, and the rewards of doing what youre supposed to do are more subtle and take longer to become apparent, which maybe makes it less attractive. But your life is the blueprint you make after the building is built.
Richard Ford
Image
I grew up in Mississippi being told it was a great place, but not feeling that. When I finally began reading seriously, literature showed me something about where I was from which was worthwhile.
Richard Ford
Image
Maybe I'm a serial regional writer. First here, then there, across the map.
Richard Ford
Image
For, how else to seize such an instant? How to shout out into the empty air just the right words, and on cue? Frame a moment to last a lifetime?
Richard Ford
Image
Love isn’t a thing, after all, but an endless series of single acts.
Richard Ford
Image
I started reading literature at 17 or 18, and I felt this extra beat to life.
Richard Ford
Image
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.
Richard Ford
Image
And I think that in myself (and perhaps evident in what I write) fear of loss and the corresponding instinct to protect myself against loss are potent forces.
Richard Ford
Image
It's interesting to leave a place, interesting even to think about it. Leaving reminds us of what we can part with and what we can't, then offers us something new to look forward to, to dream about.
Richard Ford
Image
Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.
Richard Ford
Image
I don't have a very logical and orderly mind.
Richard Ford
Image
Most things don't stay the way they are for very long. I take nothing for granted and try to be ready for the change that's soon to come.
Richard Ford
Image
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.
Richard Ford
Image
Only sometimes you can't feel anything about a subject without hypothesizing its extinction.
Richard Ford
Image
America beats on you so hard the whole time. You are constantly being pummeled by other people's rights and their sense of patriotism.
Richard Ford
Image
Some people think that writers are innately solitary and that there's a kind of romance to that solitariness. I tend to think that what writers really want to do is get accepted into things. They want to get accepted into society, into culture, into intelligentsia, into the fun. Writing is their mechanism, their instrument, for doing that.
Richard Ford
Image
If you lose all hope, you can always find it again.
Richard Ford