Knowing and knowing what to do about it were two different things. Richard Russo More Quotes by Richard Russo More Quotes From Richard Russo 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 storiesdoorsthinking Who but an English professor would threaten to kill a duck a day and hold up a goose as an example? Richard Russo professorsducksexample A short story is something that I think can be intuited and envisioned and held in your mind almost at once. Richard Russo storiesmindthinking Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me. Richard Russo structure ... Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak and that makes her a writer after my own heart. Richard Russo hilarityknivesheart 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 suicidekidsthinking Where was the middle ground between a sense of adventure and just plain sense? Richard Russo middle-groundmiddleadventure To weigh and evaluate a vast grid of information, much of it meaningless, and to arrive at sensible, if erroneous, conclusions, is a skill not to be sneezed at. Richard Russo gridsinformationskills Steve Yarbrough's Safe from the Neighbors will take your breath away. Ambitious, funny, sad, smart, and beautifully crafted, it's everything a novel should be. Richard Russo ambitioussmartsafe One of the nice things about our marriage, at least to my way of thinking, is that my wife and I no longer have to argue every thing through. We each know what the other will say, and so the saying becomes an unnecessary formality. No doubt some marriage counselor would explain to us that our problem is a failure to communicate, but to my way of thinking we've worked long and hard to achieve this silence, Lily's and mine, so fraught with mutual understanding. Richard Russo nicelongthinking The line of gray along the horizon is brighter now, and with the coming light I feel a certainty: that there is, despite our wild imaginings, only one life. The ghostly others, no matter how real they seem, no matter how badly we need them, are phantoms. The one life we're left with is sufficient to fill and refill our imperfect hearts with joy, and then to shatter them. And it never, ever lets up. Richard Russo lightrealheart 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 depthunderstandingcharacter 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 memoriesbookthinking 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 faithwritingorder 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. Richard Russo irondadbook I can be glib and truthful all at once. Richard Russo truthfuli-can I get and read an enormous number of first novels. Richard Russo enormousnumbersfirsts I'll tell you one thing, though. It's a terrible thing to be a disappointment to a good woman. Richard Russo good-womanterribledisappointment I told him the truth, that I loved him and didn't regret anything about our lives together. But do we ever 'tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God' as my father used to say, to those we love? Or even to ourselves? Don't even the best and most fortunate of lives hint at other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too? Isn't this why we can't help feeling cheated, even when we know we haven't been? Richard Russo regretfeelingsfather If you work at comedy too laboriously, you can kill what's funny in the joke. Richard Russo jokescomedyifs
