Richard Russo (born July 15, 1949) is an American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and teacher.
I get and read an enormous number of first novels.
My dad had this rock hard body and would work 12- to 13-hour days. The guys he worked with were scrap-iron guys. Nobody on that road crew had read a book in 10 years, but there was something about the way they lived I really admired.
In the end it all came down to companionship, to friendship, to sacrifice, to compromise.
Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that.
I read pretty voraciously. If it's good, I don't care what it is.
There are a great many sins in this world, none of them original.
As I drift back into sleep, I can't help thinking that it's a wonderful thing to be right about the world. To weigh the evidence, always incomplete, and correctly intuit the whole, to see the world in a grain of sand, to recognize its beauty, its simplicity, its truth. It's as close as we get to God in this life, and reside in the glow of such brief flashes of understanding, fully awake, sometimes for two or three seconds, at peace with our existence. And then back to sleep we go.
America has always been a nation of small places, and as we lose them, we're losing part of ourselves.
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.
What I discovered I liked best about striking out on my bicycle was that the farther I got from home, the more interesting and unusual my thoughts became.
Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.
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.
. . . aware, as always, that the truth isn't much of substitute for a good answer.
And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don't take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.
Odd that the future should be so difficult to bring into focus when the past, uninvited, offered itself up so easily for inspection.
People who imagine themselves to be self-made seldom enjoy examining the process of manufacture in detail.
People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.
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.
You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.
Knowing and knowing what to do about it were two different things.