Richard Russo Quotes

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Doing, Wrong, Books

• 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

  Topics in America

  Tags in Writing, American

• 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.

  Richard Russo

  Topics in Health

  Tags in Tell, Head

• 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.

  Richard Russo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Help, Need, Until

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

  Richard Russo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Sociology, Deals, Perception

• I read pretty voraciously. If it’s good, I don’t care what it is.

  Richard Russo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Pretty, Read

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Back, Keep

• I can be glib and truthful all at once.

  Richard Russo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Once

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Character, Long

• I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.

  Richard Russo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Worry, Writer, Running

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Write, Comedy, View

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Anything, Kind, Why

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Ever, Writing, Enough

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Book, Same, Try

• I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody’s fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about.

  Richard Russo

  Topics in Nature

  Tags in Talk, Anybody

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Care, Trying

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Mean, Career, Look

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

  Richard Russo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Theme, Effect, American

• If you work at comedy too laboriously, you can kill what’s funny in the joke.

  Richard Russo

  Topics in Work

  Tags in Comedy, Joke

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

  Richard Russo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Delighted, Movie

Richard Russo (36)

Birth:	15th July, 1949
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Novelist, Screenwriter, Teacher, Writer

About

Richard Russo is an American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and teacher. Russo was born in Johnstown, New York, and raised in nearby Gloversville. He earned a Bachelor's degree, a Master of Fine Arts degree, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Arizona, which he attended from 1967 through 1979.

Related Authors

• Quentin R. Bufogle
• Douglas Adams
• Mary Webb
• Jill Shalvis
• Margaret Laurence
• Dorothy Salisbury Davis
• Katherine Dunn
• Anaïs Nin
• Anchee Min
• Elizabeth McCracken

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 26th April

Births

• 1798 - Eugène Delacroix
• 1916 - Morris West
• 1889 - Ludwig Wittgenstein
• 1977 - Tom Welling
• 1980 - Jordana Brewster

Deaths

• 2004 - Lee Loevinger
• 2003 - Peter Stone
• 1969 - Morihei Ueshiba
• 1989 - Lucille Ball
• 2005 - Augusto Roa Bastos