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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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Richard Ford
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: February 16
Novelist
Writer
Jackson
Mississippi
Things
Two
Generally
People
Anything
Miss
Back
Missing
Humans
Beginning
Need
Spend
Gist
Right
Cutting
Qualifying
Important
Taking
Contradicting
Needs
Forever
Sentences

More quotes by Richard Ford

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Only sometimes you can't feel anything about a subject without hypothesizing its extinction.
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Some idiotic things are well worth doing.
Richard Ford
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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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I don't have a very logical and orderly mind.
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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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.
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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
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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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Very early you come to the realization that nothing will ever take you away from yourself.
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If sportswriting teaches you anything, and there is much truth to it as well as plenty of lies, it is that for your life to be worth anything you must sooner or later face the possibility of terrible, searing regret. Though you must also manage to avoid it or your life will be ruined.
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Maybe I'm a serial regional writer. First here, then there, across the map.
Richard Ford
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Paul Ryan, he is the real evil genius of the Republican party. He with his little hateful widow's peak and his smirky, snarly, simpering non-entity self, that's who I detest. Trump's just a moron, but Ryan is ugly and evil.
Richard Ford
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Any rainy summer morning, of course, has the seeds of gloomy alienation sown in. But a rainy summer morning far from home - when your personal clouds don't move but hang - can easily produce the feeling of the world as seen from the grave. This I know.
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.
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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'm kind of a distractible guy.
Richard Ford
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Americans don't have saner gun laws because most Americans, including those citizens who puzzle over better angels, don't want saner gun laws.
Richard Ford
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Most things don't stay the way they are very long.
Richard Ford
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Literature should not be exclusive, it should be inclusive. My general view is that you can't, based on your own experience, project what a book will do for someone else. That's why I don't review books.
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