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" I get and read an enormous number of first novels. "
Richard Russo
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Read
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" People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny. "
Richard Russo
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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. "
Richard Russo
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" I can be glib and truthful all at once. "
Richard Russo
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" 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. "
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You
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She
" Writers are people who put pen to paper every day. "
Richard Russo
Who
Day
Every Day
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end, the comic's best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he's doing is easy is an occupational hazard. "
Richard Russo
End
Worry
People
" 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
" 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
" If my career continues along its current arc, people will probably look at me and see a writer who is obsessed with the relationship between rich and poor and with how the rich somehow or other always manage to betray the poor, even when they don't mean to. "
Richard Russo
People
Look
Me
" You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel. "
Richard Russo
Things
Much
Over
" 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 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
Write
Comedy
" 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
" 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
Tired
Independence
Reading
" People in small towns, much more than in cities, share a destiny. "
Richard Russo
Destiny
Small
People
" Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me. "
Richard Russo
Will
Structure
Me
" I read pretty voraciously. If it's good, I don't care what it is. "
Richard Russo
Good
Pretty
Read
" Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don't have to go looking for it. "
Richard Russo
Theme
Looking
Go
" A lot of my characters in all of my books have a self-destructive urge. They'll do precisely the thing that they know is wrong, take a perverse delight in doing the wrong thing. "
Richard Russo
Know
Wrong Thing
Doing
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Not everyone writes well from a child's point of view. "
Richard Russo
Point Of View
Everyone
Child
" I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long. "
Richard Russo
Long
Caring
Writing
" 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
" I'm delighted by how Nobody's Fool turned out. It was a rare movie. "
Richard Russo
Nobody
Fool
How