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One of the odd things about middle age, he concluded, was the strange decisions a man discovers he's made by not really making them, like allowing friends to drift away through simple neglect.

Richard Russo

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Richard Russo
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: July 15
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Johnstown
New York
Like
Friends
Odd
Simple
Neglect
Making
Allowing
Away
Decisions
Made
Strange
Really
Decision
Concluded
Things
Middle
Discovers
Men
Age
Drift

More quotes by 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.
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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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...aware, as always, that the truth isn't much of substitute for a good answer.
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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.
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I can be glib and truthful all at once.
Richard Russo
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I've never written nearly as much about place as people seem to think I do. I just write about class.
Richard Russo
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I don't think there's a shortage of material in the world. Or in my head. I just pray for continued good health, because I've got other stories to tell.
Richard Russo
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People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.
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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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Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation.
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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.
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Some authors have a very hard time understanding that in order to be faithful to the spirit of the book, it's almost always impossible to remain faithful to the text. You have to make changes.
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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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Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.
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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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... 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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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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There are a great many sins in this world, none of them original.
Richard Russo
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Knowing and knowing what to do about it were two different things.
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America has always been a nation of small places, and as we lose them, we're losing part of ourselves.
Richard Russo