Richard Russo
Richard Russo
Richard Russois an American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and teacher...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth15 July 1949
CountryUnited States of America
Richard Russo quotes about
past focus odd
Odd that the future should be so difficult to bring into focus when the past, uninvited, offered itself up so easily for inspection.
errors stories way
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.
together scene novel
Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that.
comedy ifs jokes
If you work at comedy too laboriously, you can kill what's funny in the joke.
writing order trying
You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical, it's because I really don't know how it works, but I trust that it does. I try to write the way I read, in order to find out what happens next.
structure
Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me.
dad book years
My dad had this rock hard body and would work 12- to 13-hour days. The guys he worked with were scrap-iron guys. Nobody on that road crew had read a book in 10 years, but there was something about the way they lived I really admired.
nice thinking long
One of the nice things about our marriage, at least to my way of thinking, is that my wife and I no longer have to argue every thing through. We each know what the other will say, and so the saying becomes an unnecessary formality. No doubt some marriage counselor would explain to us that our problem is a failure to communicate, but to my way of thinking we've worked long and hard to achieve this silence, Lily's and mine, so fraught with mutual understanding.
smart ambitious safe
Steve Yarbrough's Safe from the Neighbors will take your breath away. Ambitious, funny, sad, smart, and beautifully crafted, it's everything a novel should be.
skills information grids
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.
tasks overwhelming smallest
Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.
adventure middle middle-ground
Where was the middle ground between a sense of adventure and just plain sense?
trying knows ifs
When you don't know what to do, try something; if that doesn't work, try something else.
numbers firsts enormous
I get and read an enormous number of first novels.