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If there's an enduring theme in my work, it's probably the effects of class on American life.

Richard Russo

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Richard Russo
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: July 15
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Johnstown
New York
Class
American
Work
Life
Enduring
Theme
Endure
Effects
Probably

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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Who but an English professor would threaten to kill a duck a day and hold up a goose as an example?
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... Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak and that makes her a writer after my own heart.
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To his surprise he also discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something, whether painting or poetry, that you cared about a great deal.
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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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A short story is something that I think can be intuited and envisioned and held in your mind almost at once.
Richard Russo
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There are a great many sins in this world, none of them original.
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When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that's the end. Here's another who's never going to write well again.
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The other possibility was that there was no right thing to say, that the choice wasn't between right and wrong but between wrong, more wrong, and as wrong as you can get.
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He looks like he could be taken in a fight. Not by me, but by somebody. Not anyone in Humanities, probably.
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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?
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Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.
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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.
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In the end it all came down to companionship, to friendship, to sacrifice, to compromise.
Richard Russo
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...aware, as always, that the truth isn't much of substitute for a good answer.
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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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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They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving.
Richard Russo
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I can be glib and truthful all at once.
Richard Russo