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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.

Richard Russo

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Richard Russo
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: July 15
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Johnstown
New York
Book
Trying
Much
Heartbreaking
Think
Occupy
Thinking
Hilarious
Life
Territory
Separate
Often

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Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me.
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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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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.
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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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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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America has always been a nation of small places, and as we lose them, we're losing part of ourselves.
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In the end it all came down to companionship, to friendship, to sacrifice, to compromise.
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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.
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It's possible to overlook character flaws of in-laws for the simple reason that you feel neither responsible for them nor genetically implicated.
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Knowing and knowing what to do about it were two different things.
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I get and read an enormous number of first novels.
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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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Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don't have to go looking for it.
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I was pretty dead set against ever writing an academic novel. It's always been my view that there are already more than enough academic novels and that most of them aren't any good. Most of them are self-conscious and bitter, the work of people who want to settle grudges.
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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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Where was the middle ground between a sense of adventure and just plain sense?
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I'm delighted by how Nobody's Fool turned out. It was a rare movie.
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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.
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I was the one who did come through that door. You were the one she was waiting for.
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People who imagine themselves to be self-made seldom enjoy examining the process of manufacture in detail.
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