Quotes by Richard Russo

“One of the odd things about middle age...was the strange decisions a man discovers hes made by not really making them.”

“To his surprise he...discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at somethingthat you cared about a great deal.”

“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.”

“Truth be told, I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“What did I think? Right then I was thinking about my father, specifically his habit of treating everyone with courtesy and consideration, of how he used to stop on lower Division Street and convers...”

“Like many men addicted to sports, Clive Sr. was also a religious man.”

“Miles smiled. "Can you keep a secret?"Bea snorted. "Did I tell you what you were in for if you married my daughter?""No," Miles conceded."Well, then," she said, as if that settled the matter.”

“At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.”

“I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end, the comic's best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he's doing i...”

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

“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 ...”

“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?”

“...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 readi...”

“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 ta...”

“Max would conclude, "that's who I want to be. The pope. And I'll do the same thing he does. I'll keep all the goddamn money.”

“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 t...”

“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.”