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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

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Richard Russo
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: July 15
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Johnstown
New York
Worked
Early
Costly
Beginning
Nearer
Ends
Note
Stories
False
Part
Errors
Much
Notes
Way
Foundation

More quotes by 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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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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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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Knowing and knowing what to do about it were two different things.
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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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Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.
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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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People who imagine themselves to be self-made seldom enjoy examining the process of manufacture in detail.
Richard Russo
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I was the one who did come through that door. You were the one she was waiting for.
Richard Russo
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I can be glib and truthful all at once.
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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There are a great many sins in this world, none of them original.
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My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.
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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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Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that.
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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.
Richard Russo
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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
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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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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.
Richard Russo
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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.
Richard Russo