Richard Russo (born July 15, 1949) is an American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and teacher.
People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny.
Knowing and knowing what to do about it were two different things.
You can be interested in a Jane Smiley novel whether or not anyone says a word. She enters into her characters thoughts with great understanding and depth.
I was the one who did come through that door. You were the one she was waiting for.
. . . Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak and that makes her a writer after my own heart.
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.
I'll tell you one thing, though. It's a terrible thing to be a disappointment to a good woman.
There are a great many sins in this world, none of them original.
It's no secret that in my books I'm trying to make the comic and the serious rub up against each other just as closely and uncomfortably as I can.
I don't think America has ever had a center the way London is the center of England or Dublin is the center of Ireland.
I get and read an enormous number of first novels.
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.
They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving.
America has always been a nation of small places, and as we lose them, we're losing part of ourselves.
I looked back at some of my earlier published stories with genuine horror and remorse. I got thinking, How many extant copies might there be, who owns them, and do they keep their doors locked?
A short story is something that I think can be intuited and envisioned and held in your mind almost at once.
Worse, I have to admit to feeling the jealousy of one crab for another that has managed to climb out of the barrel.
I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.
Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.
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 the air in the way of illness. Also depression, which, Miss Beryl believed, in conjunction with guilt, opened the door to illness. Miss Beryl didn't know any teachers who weren't habitually guilty and depressed-guilty they hadn't accomplished more with their students, depressed that very little more was possible.