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" I'm delighted by how Nobody's Fool turned out. It was a rare movie. "
Richard Russo
Nobody
Fool
How
Related Quotes:
" 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 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 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
" 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
You
America
" Not everyone writes well from a child's point of view. "
Richard Russo
Point Of View
Everyone
Child
" 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
" 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
" People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny. "
Richard Russo
People
Funny
Ask
" What comes easiest for me is dialogue. Sometimes when my characters are speaking to me, I have to slow them down so that I'm not simply taking dictation. "
Richard Russo
Sometimes
Slow
Me
" 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'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
" Truth be told, I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted. "
Richard Russo
People
Easy
Experience
" 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
" Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me. "
Richard Russo
Will
Structure
Me
" At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious. "
Richard Russo
Think
Writing
World
" 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
" 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
" Writers are people who put pen to paper every day. "
Richard Russo
Who
Day
Every Day
" 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
" 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
" Usually by the time I finish a book tour I've just about had it with the book. "
Richard Russo
Finish
Book
About
" 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
" What does it feel like to be a parent? What does it feel like to be a child? And that's what stories do. They bring you there. They offer a dramatic explanation, which is always different from an expository explanation. "
Richard Russo
You
Parent
Feel
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
Try
Think
Life
" I read pretty voraciously. If it's good, I don't care what it is. "
Richard Russo
Good
Pretty
Read
" A short story is something that I think can be intuited and envisioned and held in your mind almost at once. "
Richard Russo
Almost
Mind
Short