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" America has always been a nation of small places, and as we lose them, we're losing part of ourselves. "
Richard Russo
Losing
Lose
America
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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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" I can be glib and truthful all at once. "
Richard Russo
I Can
Truthful
Once
" 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
People
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America
" I think it would be harder for me not to write comedy because the comic view of things is the one that comes most naturally to me. "
Richard Russo
Think
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Comedy
" When I look back over my novels what I find is that when I think I'm finished with a theme, I'm generally not. And usually themes will recur from novel to novel in odd, new guises. "
Richard Russo
Look
Back
Find
" I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody's fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about. "
Richard Russo
Think
Anybody
I Think
" People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny. "
Richard Russo
People
Funny
Ask
" I don't think America has ever had a center the way London is the center of England or Dublin is the center of Ireland. "
Richard Russo
Think
Way
Ireland
" Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me. "
Richard Russo
Will
Structure
Me
" 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
Understanding
Time
Book
" 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
Here
Never
Going
" The deepest failures any fiction writer is likely to have are failures of not quite comprehending the truth of the story that he or she is telling. "
Richard Russo
He
Truth
Writer
" 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. "
Richard Russo
Writing
View
Good
" I've never written nearly as much about place as people seem to think I do. I just write about class. "
Richard Russo
Think
Class
Just
" Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that. "
Richard Russo
Time
Handle
Movies
" Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don't have to go looking for it. "
Richard Russo
Theme
Looking
Go
" 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
People
Think
Nature
" 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. "
Richard Russo
Memory
Think
Imagination
" I looked back at some of my earlier published stories with genuine horror and remorse. I got thinking, How many extant copies might there be, who owns them, and do they keep their doors locked? "
Richard Russo
Thinking
Genuine
Horror
" Even at its most perceptive, sociology deals in abstractions. "
Richard Russo
Perceptive
Most
Even
" About 15 years ago I went though a period of a year or so when I just couldn't find anything good. My wife noticed I was having trouble reading menus. I bought some cheap reading glasses in a drug store. I got home and suddenly all these books that weren't good were good. "
Richard Russo
Wife
Good
Find
" I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry. "
Richard Russo
About
Dry
Running
" 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. "
Richard Russo
Suicide
Trying
Think
" It's no secret that in my books I'm trying to make the comic and the serious rub up against each other just as closely and uncomfortably as I can. "
Richard Russo
Secret
Books
I Can
" 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
End
Back
Mind
" Cary Grant never won an Oscar, primarily, I suspect, because he made everything look so effortless. Why reward someone for having fun, for being charming? "
Richard Russo
Someone
Having Fun
Look
" You can be interested in a Jane Smiley novel whether or not anyone says a word. She enters into her characters' thoughts with great understanding and depth. "
Richard Russo
You
Great
She
" People in small towns, much more than in cities, share a destiny. "
Richard Russo
Destiny
Small
People
" I read pretty voraciously. If it's good, I don't care what it is. "
Richard Russo
Good
Pretty
Read
" 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
Find
You
Trust