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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

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

More quotes by Richard Ford

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I've been mainly a happy boy in my life. I married the right girl and we did what we wanted to do.
Richard Ford
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The ways in which things are superficially similar but also distinct is interesting to me.
Richard Ford
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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
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I started reading literature at 17 or 18, and I felt this extra beat to life.
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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
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Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea.
Richard Ford
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I wouldn't be a very good writer if someone hadn't taught me how to read.
Richard Ford
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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.
Richard Ford
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I'm intrigued by how ordinary behavior exists so close beside its opposite.
Richard Ford
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The art of living your life has a lot to do with getting over loss. The less the past haunts you, the better.
Richard Ford
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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
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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
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The thing about being a writer is that you never have to ask, 'Am I doing something that's worthwhile?' Because even if you fail at it, you know that it's worth doing.
Richard Ford
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I think that's the thing that memoir can do more than anything it does it testifies and bears witness to the existence of people whose lives, pleasures and virtues would never have been testified to without my having done it. That makes me really glad.
Richard Ford
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The world is a more engaging and less dramatic place than writers ever give it credit for being
Richard Ford
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I didn't feel up to writing about 9/11. If I were to write about it, it would take me years.
Richard Ford
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Very early you come to the realization that nothing will ever take you away from yourself.
Richard Ford
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I have a theory... that someplace at the heart of most compelling stories is something that doesn't make sense.
Richard Ford
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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
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Life's passed along to us empty. We have to make up the happiness part.
Richard Ford