Richard Ford
Richard Ford
Richard Fordis an American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land and Let Me Be Frank with You, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 February 1944
CityJackson, MS
CountryUnited States of America
Richard Ford quotes about
loneliness stories disease
If loneliness is the disease, the story is the cure.
son thinking people
I'm trying to cause people to be interested in the particulars of their lives because I think that's one thing literature can do for us. It can say to us: pay attention. Pay closer attention. Pay stricter attention to what you say to your son.
facts mystery married
Married life requires shared mystery even when all the facts are known.
reading writing
Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.
opposites ordinary behavior
I'm intrigued by how ordinary behavior exists so close beside its opposite.
space remember our-lives
What was our life like? I almost don't remember now. Though I remember it, the space of time it occupied. And I remember it fondly.
moving people world
Things happen when people are not where they belong, and the world moves forward and back by that principle.
heart stories crafts
At heart, of course, a story itself is consolation's instrument.
order insanity style
Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency-a chaos-, an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end life as we know it but for the fact that this very story is written, this order found, this style determined, the worst averted, and we are beneficiaries of that order by being readers
pace pace-of-life dangerous
The pace of life feels morally dangerous to me.
regret lying faces
If sportswriting teaches you anything, and there is much truth to it as well as plenty of lies, it is that for your life to be worth anything you must sooner or later face the possibility of terrible, searing regret. Though you must also manage to avoid it or your life will be ruined.
smart cynicism feels
Cynicism makes you feel smart, I know it, even when you aren't smart.
interesting way
The ways in which things are superficially similar but also distinct is interesting to me.
writing hands force
Writing never came naturally and I still have to force my hand to do it.