Quote

Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me.

Richard Russo

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Richard Russo
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: July 15
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Johnstown
New York
Hope
Always
Things
Reveal
Structure

More quotes by Richard Russo

Image
Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.
Richard Russo
Image
By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.
Richard Russo
Image
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.
Richard Russo
Image
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
Image
Knowing and knowing what to do about it were two different things.
Richard Russo
Image
I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other. And what kind of satisfactions they derive from it. And why there is always a cost, and a price to be paid.
Richard Russo
Image
Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don't have to go looking for it.
Richard Russo
Image
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
Image
A short story is something that I think can be intuited and envisioned and held in your mind almost at once.
Richard Russo
Image
I've never written nearly as much about place as people seem to think I do. I just write about class.
Richard Russo
Image
In the end it all came down to companionship, to friendship, to sacrifice, to compromise.
Richard Russo
Image
People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.
Richard Russo
Image
Where was the middle ground between a sense of adventure and just plain sense?
Richard Russo
Image
Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that.
Richard Russo
Image
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
Image
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
Image
... Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak and that makes her a writer after my own heart.
Richard Russo
Image
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.
Richard Russo
Image
Go to it. Be bold. Be true. Be kind. Rotate your tires. Don't drink so much. There aren't going to be enough liver transplants to go around.
Richard Russo
Image
To weigh and evaluate a vast grid of information, much of it meaningless, and to arrive at sensible, if erroneous, conclusions, is a skill not to be sneezed at.
Richard Russo