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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. "

Richard Russo

Understanding

Time

Book

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" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" I read pretty voraciously. If it's good, I don't care what it is. "

" 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. "

" Even at its most perceptive, sociology deals in abstractions. "

" People in small towns, much more than in cities, share a destiny. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don't have to go looking for it. "

Richard Russo

Theme

Looking

" 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. "

" A short story is something that I think can be intuited and envisioned and held in your mind almost at once. "

" I'm delighted by how Nobody's Fool turned out. It was a rare movie. "

" 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? "

" If there's an enduring theme in my work, it's probably the effects of class on American life. "

" America has always been a nation of small places, and as we lose them, we're losing part of ourselves. "

" 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? "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I can be glib and truthful all at once. "

" 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. "

" Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that. "

" Usually by the time I finish a book tour I've just about had it with the book. "

" HBO is really famous for hiring good people and staying out of their way until they ask for help, or need it. And that reputation is earned. "

" Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me. "

Richard Russo

Will

Structure

" I've never written nearly as much about place as people seem to think I do. I just write about class. "

" You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel. "

" 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. "