Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Richard Russo
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: July 15
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Johnstown
New York
Would
Body
Guys
Admired
Book
Rocks
Crew
Hard
Lived
Iron
Work
Nobody
Dad
Something
Days
Hour
Years
Guy
Road
Really
Hours
Rock
Way
Read
Worked
Scrap

More quotes by Richard Russo

Image
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
Image
Knowing and knowing what to do about it were two different things.
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
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
A short story is something that I think can be intuited and envisioned and held in your mind almost at once.
Richard Russo
Image
Where was the middle ground between a sense of adventure and just plain sense?
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
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
Image
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
Image
A couple years ago, the novelist Russell Banks told me he was reading the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. I asked why. He said, 'Because I've always wanted to and am tired of having my reading assigned.' I thought it was a marvelous declaration of independence.
Richard Russo
Image
America has always been a nation of small places, and as we lose them, we're losing part of ourselves.
Richard Russo
Image
Steve Yarbrough's Safe from the Neighbors will take your breath away. Ambitious, funny, sad, smart, and beautifully crafted, it's everything a novel should be.
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
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
Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation.
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
Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me.
Richard Russo
Image
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
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
There are a great many sins in this world, none of them original.
Richard Russo