I want that which is hilarious and that which is heartbreaking to occupy the same territory in the book because I think they very often occupy the same territory in life, much as we try to separate them. – Richard Russo
I think it would be harder for me not to write comedy because the comic view of things is the one that comes most naturally to me. – Richard Russo
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. – Richard Russo
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. – Richard Russo
I don’t think there’s a shortage of material in the world. Or in my head. I just pray for continued good health, because I’ve got other stories to tell. – Richard Russo
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. – Richard Russo
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. – Richard Russo
I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody’s fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about. – Richard Russo
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? – Richard Russo
My books are elegiac in the sense that they’re odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination. – Richard Russo
When I look back over my novels what I find is that when I think I’m finished with a theme, I’m generally not. And usually themes will recur from novel to novel in odd, new guises. – Richard Russo
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. – Richard Russo
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. – Richard Russo
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. – Richard Russo
If there’s an enduring theme in my work, it’s probably the effects of class on American life. – Richard Russo
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. – Richard Russo
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. – Richard Russo
When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that’s the end. Here’s another who’s never going to write well again. – Richard Russo
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. – Richard Russo
