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

More quotes by Richard Russo

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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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America has always been a nation of small places, and as we lose them, we're losing part of ourselves.
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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.
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Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation.
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Sleep is over-rated. Have you ever noticed how it's always recommended to people anybody with half a brain can see need to wake up?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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To expect reason is where the fallacy lies.
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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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If there's an enduring theme in my work, it's probably the effects of class on American life.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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
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In the end it all came down to companionship, to friendship, to sacrifice, to compromise.
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Odd that the future should be so difficult to bring into focus when the past, uninvited, offered itself up so easily for inspection.
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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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