Richard Ford

My father died in my arms. That's tumult. That's everything exploding.

— Richard Ford

To write you had to read so I backed into reading.

— Richard Ford

And I think that in myself (and perhaps evident in what I write) fear of loss and the corresponding instinct to protect…

— Richard Ford

“It's hard to go through life without killing someone.”

— Richard Ford

I haven't scoured Dixie out of my voice. But I don't think that the books that I have written... have really in…

— Richard Ford

“I like writing that’s smart on the page.”

— Richard Ford

“Against these forces -- an earth rotating, a sun lowering its angle in the sky, winds filling with rain and the geese…

— Richard Ford

For, how else to seize such an instant? How to shout out into the empty air just the right words, and on…

— Richard Ford

My job is to have empathy and curiosity for things that I've never done. Also, I'm a person whom people talk to.

— Richard Ford

I get very involved in the internal logic of sentences.

— Richard Ford

The past is the prism through which we see a great, great, great deal of ourselves; it's a useful prism. It doesn't…

— Richard Ford

At heart, of course, a story itself is consolation's instrument.

— Richard Ford

You're only good if you can do bad and decide not to.

— Richard Ford

I've been mainly a happy boy in my life. I married the right girl and we did what we wanted to do.

— Richard Ford

“the worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of new regret, just as you get a glimmer…

— Richard Ford

Well, I believe in the idea of 'normal' in the way that I believe in the idea of logic. Or the idea…

— Richard Ford

I have a theory... that someplace at the heart of most compelling stories is something that doesn't make sense.

— Richard Ford

When you are sixteen you do not know what your parents know, or much of what they understand, and less of what's…

— Richard Ford

A reader is entitled to believe what he or she believes is consonant with the facts of the book. It is not…

— Richard Ford

Theres a lot to be said for doing what youre not supposed to do, and the rewards of doing what youre supposed…

— Richard Ford

For a writer, children make life needlessly hard. I've muddled through a lot of things, but I have not muddled through my…

— Richard Ford

Literature has as one of its principal allures that it tells you something about life that life itself can't tell you. I…

— Richard Ford

You can't always go to the well and have things be funny.

— Richard Ford

Being a slow reader would normally be a deficiency; I found a way to make it an asset. I began to sound…

— Richard Ford

Your life doesn't mean what you have or what you get. Its what your'e willing to give up.

— Richard Ford