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Richard Russo QUOTES

Richard Russo QUOTES

1 " It was a scary thought. A man could be surrounded by poetry reading and not know it. "

― Richard Russo , Nobody's Fool (Sully #1)

2 " I don't tell you this story today in order to encourage all of you in the class of '04 to find careers in the music business, but rather to suggest what the next decade of your lives is likely to be about, and that is, trying to ensure that you don't wake up at 32 or 35 or 40 tenured to a life that happened to you when you weren't paying strict attention, either because the money was good, or it made your parents proud, or because you were unlucky enough to discover an aptitude for the very thing that bores you to tears, or for any of the other semi-valid reasons people marshal to justify allowing the true passion of their lives to leak away. If you're lucky, you may have more than one chance to get things right, but second and third chances, like second and third marriages, can be dicey propositions, and they don't come with guarantees.... The question then is this: How does a person keep from living the wrong life? "

― Richard Russo

3 " Maybe sheetrocking wasn't one of Sully's favorite jobs, but like most physical labor, there was a rhythm to it that you could find if you cared to look, and once you found this rhythm it'd get you through a morning. Rhythm was what Sully had counted on over the long years - that and the wisdom to understand that no job, no matter how thankless or stupid or backbreaking, could not be gotten through. The clock moved if you let it. "

― Richard Russo , Nobody's Fool (Sully #1)

4 " What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words? "

― Richard Russo , Empire Falls

5 " ...he had to comfort himself with the firm conviction that most of what he objected to in Mohawk and the world at large was not the result of people reading the wrong books, but rather of not reading any at all. "

― Richard Russo , Mohawk

6 " Nor do I want the woman that I’m married to and that I love to leave me, but the thought of her doing so moves me in a way that our growing old together and contentedly slipping, in affectionate tandem, toward the grave does not. "

― Richard Russo , Straight Man

7 " Since her retirement from teaching Miss Beryl's health had in many respects greatly improved, despite her advancing years. An eighth-grade classroom was an excellent place to snag whatever was in the air in the way of illness. Also depression, which, Miss Beryl believed, in conjunction with guilt, opened the door to illness. Miss Beryl didn't know any teachers who weren't habitually guilty and depressed--guilty they hadn't accomplished more with their students, depressed that very little more was possible. "

― Richard Russo , Nobody's Fool (Sully #1)

8 " He’d meant to forgive his brother, maybe even imagined he had. He’d also meant to learn to trust him, but instead merely fell into the habit of waiting for him to fuck up again. "

― Richard Russo , Empire Falls

9 " 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. "

― Richard Russo

10 " An imperfect human heart, perfectly shattered, was her conclusion. A condition so common as to be virtually universal, rendering issues of right and wrong almost incidental. "

― Richard Russo , Nobody's Fool (Sully #1)

11 " It’s not an easy time for any parent, this moment when the realization dawns that you’ve given birth to something that will never see things the way you do, despite the fact that it is your living legacy, that it bears your name. "

― Richard Russo , Straight Man

12 " Everybody looked at Sully suspiciously. A rumor that he had burned up in the blaze had been circulating, and people had quickly adjusted to the idea of profound human tragedy. They were reluctant to give it up, Sully could tell. He smiled apologetically at the crowd. "

― Richard Russo , Nobody's Fool (Sully #1)

13 " - You get more misanthropic every day.

- I get older every day. My experience of human nature gets wider and deeper. "

― Richard Russo , Straight Man

14 " 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 , The Risk Pool

15 " Interesting, Miles thought. Like himself, Father Mark, as a child, had been reassured by the imagined proximity of God, whereas adults, perhaps because they so often were up to no good, took more comfort from His remoteness. "

― Richard Russo , Empire Falls

16 " Stories worked much the same way…A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation. "

― Richard Russo , That Old Cape Magic

17 " No, Sully'd decided long ago to abstain from all but the most general forms of regret. He allowed himself the vague wish that things had turned out differently, without blaming himself that they hadn't, any more than he'd blamed himself when his 1-2-3 triple never ran like it should at least once. It didn't pay to second-guess every one of life's decisions, to pretend to wisdom about the past from the safety of the present, the way so many people did when they got older. As if, given a second chance to live their lives, they'd be smarter. Sully didn't know too many people who got noticeably smarter over the course of a lifetime. Some made fewer mistakes, but in Sully's opinion that was because they couldn't go quite so fast. They had less energy, no more virtue; fewer opportunities to screw up, not more wisdom. It was Sully's policy to stick by his mistakes.... "

― Richard Russo , Nobody's Fool (Sully #1)

18 " No, Sully'd decided long ago to abstain from all but the most general forms of regret. He allowed himself the vague wish that things had turned out differently, without blaming himself that they hadn't, any more than he'd blamed himself when his 1-2-3 triple never ran like it should at least once. It didn't pay to second-guess every one of life's decisions, to pretend to wisdom about the past from the safety of the present, the way so many people did when they got older. "

― Richard Russo , Nobody's Fool (Sully #1)

19 " You can't possibly judge your ability to control something until you've experienced the extremes of its capabilities. Do you understand? "

― Richard Russo , Empire Falls

20 " Novel writing is mostly triage (this now, that later) and obstinacy. Trying something, and when that doesn't work, trying something else. Welcoming clutter Surrendering a good idea for a better one. Knowing you won't find the finish line for a year or two, or five... "

― Richard Russo , Elsewhere