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I get and read an enormous number of first novels.

Richard Russo

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Richard Russo
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: July 15
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Johnstown
New York
First
Novels
Enormous
Number
Novel
Numbers
Read
Firsts

More quotes by Richard Russo

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At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.
Richard Russo
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Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don't have to go looking for it.
Richard Russo
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It's possible to overlook character flaws of in-laws for the simple reason that you feel neither responsible for them nor genetically implicated.
Richard Russo
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I think a lot of what is going on with kids who get pushed too far and attempt either murder or suicide is that they are trying to deal with their own non-existence for the people who are supposed to care most for them.
Richard Russo
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When I start getting close to the end of a novel, something registers in the back of my mind for the next novel, so that I usually don't write, or take notes. And I certainly don't begin. I just allow things to percolate for a while.
Richard Russo
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I want that which is hilarious and that which is heartbreaking to occupy the same territory in the book because I think they very often occupy the same territory in life, much as we try to separate them.
Richard Russo
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Worse, I have to admit to feeling the jealousy of one crab for another that has managed to climb out of the barrel.
Richard Russo
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Which is why we have spouses and children and parents and colleagues and friends, because someone has to know us better than we know ourselves. We need them to tell us. We need them to say, I know you, Al. You are not the kind of man who.
Richard Russo
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To expect reason is where the fallacy lies.
Richard Russo
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After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble.
Richard Russo
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Stories worked much the same way . . . A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation.
Richard Russo
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You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical, it's because I really don't know how it works, but I trust that it does. I try to write the way I read, in order to find out what happens next.
Richard Russo
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A lot of my characters in all of my books have a self-destructive urge. They'll do precisely the thing that they know is wrong, take a perverse delight in doing the wrong thing.
Richard Russo
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I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody's fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about.
Richard Russo
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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
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People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.
Richard Russo
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I was the one who did come through that door. You were the one she was waiting for.
Richard Russo
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Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.
Richard Russo
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To his surprise, she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, a kiss so full of affection that it dispelled the awkwardness, even as it caused Miles' heart to plummet, because all kisses are calibrated, and this one revealed the great chasm between affection and love.
Richard Russo
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What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?
Richard Russo