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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
Missing
Back
Beginning
Humans
Spend
Gist
Need
Cutting
Qualifying
Right
Taking
Contradicting
Important
Forever
Sentences
Needs
Two
Generally
Things
Miss
People
Anything

More quotes by 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'm intrigued by how ordinary behavior exists so close beside its opposite.
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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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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At heart, of course, a story itself is consolation's instrument.
Richard Ford
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In order to write novels for a living - it's not pathological, but I do think and worry and brood and fidget about stuff that I'm working on.
Richard Ford
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I want saner gun laws. I think all these automatic weapons should be banned, big clips and handguns should be banned. As far as I'm concerned, shotguns and hunting weapons are all that we should allow in America.
Richard Ford
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Most things don't stay the way they are very long.
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 started reading literature at 17 or 18, and I felt this extra beat to life.
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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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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Find what causes a commotion in your heart. Find a way to write about that
Richard Ford
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Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.
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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If loneliness is the disease, the story is the cure.
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 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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Some idiotic things are well worth doing.
Richard Ford