Richard Russo Quotes

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?

When my nose finally stops bleeding and I've disposed of the bloody paper towels, Teddy Barnes insists on driving me home in his ancient Honda Civic, a car that refuses to die and that Teddy, cheap as...

When you tossed pebbles down from the embankment, they believed in God. One

You want a poke in the eye with a sharp stick? Sully offered. You don’t have a stick, Will pointed out.

He always had the last word in all differences of opinion with his wife, and that—two words, actually—was, Yes, dear.

If making things seem prettier than they are is a lie, then making them seem uglier must be another.

Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me.

Aware, as always, that the truth isn't much of substitute for a good answer.

Everybody looked at Sully suspiciously. A rumor that he had burned up in the blaze had been circulating, and people had quickly adjusted to the idea of profound human tragedy. They were reluctant to g...

For fairness and loyalty, however important to the head, were issues that could seldom be squared in the human heart, at the deepest depths of which lay the mystery of affection, of love, which you ei...

Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression 'I have to say', what follows usually needn't be said?

He looks like he sucked the bottle dry about three in the morning and then stayed awake another hour or two to whistle into it.

He'd discovered that his memories of that summer were like bad movie montages - young lovers tossing a Frisbee in the park, sharing a melting ice-cream cone, bicycling along the river, laughing, talki...

His carefully calculated sincerity is almost entirely indistinguishable from the real thing.

I also think it’s possible for us to be better people tomorrow than we are today. He had no idea, of course, whether any of these things were true, in whole or in part. Still, what possible good could...

I hear you don't write any more, he says...Not true, I inform him. You should see the margins of my student papers.Not the same as writing a book though, right?Almost identical, I assure him. Both go...

Is good fiction more likely to be about the air we breathe or the nose we breathe it through?

La verdad no sirve como sustituto de una buena respuesta.

Lucy, who apparently had no idea his girlfriend's father held him in such low regard, agreed with Noonan that he was pushing the envelope, behaviorwise. Still, he was genuinely fond of the man and did...

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 thr...