By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.
quote by Richard Russo
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
I think a lot of what is going on with kids who get pushed too far and attempt either murder or suicide is that they are trying to deal with their own non-existence for the people who are supposed to care most for them.
quote by Richard Russo
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
What does it feel like to be a parent? What does it feel like to be a child? And that's what stories do. They bring you there. They offer a dramatic explanation, which is always different from an expository explanation.
quote by Richard Russo
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
When I start getting close to the end of a novel, something registers in the back of my mind for the next novel, so that I usually don't write, or take notes. And I certainly don't begin. I just allow things to percolate for a while.
quote by Richard Russo
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other. And what kind of satisfactions they derive from it. And why there is always a cost, and a price to be paid.
quote by Richard Russo
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
If my career continues along its current arc, people will probably look at me and see a writer who is obsessed with the relationship between rich and poor and with how the rich somehow or other always manage to betray the poor, even when they don't mean to.
quote by Richard Russo
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
I was pretty dead set against ever writing an academic novel. It's always been my view that there are already more than enough academic novels and that most of them aren't any good. Most of them are self-conscious and bitter, the work of people who want to settle grudges.
quote by Richard Russo
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!