Richard Russo

“people are forever confusing will with power,”

— Richard Russo

“…imagination without energy remains inert...”

— Richard Russo

“You've become a clever man.”

— Richard Russo

Not everyone writes well from a child's point of view.

— Richard Russo

I can be glib and truthful all at once.

— Richard Russo

To expect reason is where the fallacy lies.

— Richard Russo

I get and read an enormous number of first novels.

— Richard Russo

“Non basta una vita "One life isn't enough”

— Richard Russo

“Life may be a grand folly, as you say, but it is harder to appriciate the joke when you're always the butt…

— Richard Russo

Even at its most perceptive, sociology deals in abstractions.

— Richard Russo

Was anything in the world truer than that intuitive leap of the heart?

— Richard Russo

“She gave him a smile in which hope and knowledge were going at it, bare-knuckled, equally and eternally matched.”

— Richard Russo

“So what? Few men, Miles reflected, lived so comfortably within the confines of a two.word personal philosophy.”

— Richard Russo

Where was the middle ground between a sense of adventure and just plain sense?

— Richard Russo

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

— Richard Russo

“The sad, fucking truth was that no matter who you are, you never, ever, get your fill.”

— Richard Russo

By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it…

— Richard Russo

“people cling to folly as if it were their most prized possession, defending it, sometimes with violence, against the possibility of wisdom.…

— Richard Russo

“He looks like he sucked the bottle dry about three in the morning and then stayed awake another hour or two to…

— Richard Russo

“Really? When? Had all his material become threadbare? After thirty years of marriage, were you supposed to come up with new stuff…

— Richard Russo

I think it would be harder for me not to write comedy because the comic view of things is the one that…

— Richard Russo

“- You get more misanthropic every day. - I get older every day. My experience of human nature gets wider and deeper.”

— Richard Russo

The other possibility was that there was no right thing to say, that the choice wasn't between right and wrong but between…

— Richard Russo

What I discovered I liked best about striking out on my bicycle was that the farther I got from home, the more…

— Richard Russo

“But of course everything had conspired to spoil her entrance, which only went to prove what Janine already knew: that no matter…

— Richard Russo

“Slow, tick decides. Thinks happen slow. she isn't quite sure why this understanding of the world's movement should be important, but she…

— Richard Russo

“Everybody looked at Sully suspiciously. A rumor that he had burned up in the blaze had been circulating, and people had quickly…

— Richard Russo

“people confuse power with will because so few of them have the foggiest idea what they want. Absent any knowledge, will remains…

— Richard Russo

I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave…

— Richard Russo

After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those…

— Richard Russo

My dad had this rock hard body and would work 12- to 13-hour days. The guys he worked with were scrap-iron guys.…

— Richard Russo

“...he was pouring vinegar onto the hot grill, where it sputtered and foamed and hissed. The air was full of it for…

— Richard Russo

“Lucy, who apparently had no idea his girlfriend's father held him in such low regard, agreed with Noonan that he was pushing…

— Richard Russo

“He's such a good man," my mother said. "How I wish I loved him." "He's certainly crazy about you," I said, trying…

— Richard Russo

“For fairness and loyalty, however important to the head, were issues that could seldom be squared in the human heart, at the…

— Richard Russo

I told him the truth, that I loved him and didn't regret anything about our lives together. But do we ever 'tell…

— Richard Russo

“It pleased him to imagine God as someone like his mother, someone beleagured by too many responsibilities, too dog-tired to monitor an…

— Richard Russo

As I drift back into sleep, I can't help thinking that it's a wonderful thing to be right about the world. To…

— Richard Russo

“At the center of the bouquet is a monstrous peony, probably purchased on sale at the supermarket. By Tuesday its curling petals…

— Richard Russo

“In matters of affection, the rules of engagement at Empire High were detailed yet unambiguous, an extension of procedures established in junior…

— Richard Russo