250 Quotes by Richard Ford

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again.

I know you can dream your way through an otherwise fine life, and never wake up, which is what I almost did.

One of the down-side factors to living alone is that you sometimes get overly absorbed with how exact segments of time are consumed, and can begin to feel a pleasure with life that is hopelessly tinged with longing.

It is no loss to mankind when one writer decides to call it a day. When a tree falls in the forest, who cares but the monkeys?

And I think that in myself (and perhaps evident in what I write) fear of loss and the corresponding instinct to protect myself against loss are potent forces.

I had written all I was going to write, if the truth had been known, and there is nothing wrong with that. If more writers knew that, the world would be saved a lot of bad books, and more people--men and women alike--could go on to happier, more productive lives.

What's friendship's realest measure?I'll tell you. The amount of precious time you'll squander on someone else's calamities and fuck-ups.

What was our life like? I almost don't remember now. Though I remember it, the space of time it occupied. And I remember it fondly.

Then, what's the matter?' I wonder, in fact, how many times I have said that or something equal to it to a woman passing palely through my life. What're you thinking? What's made you so quiet? You seem suddenly different. What's the matter? Love me is what this means, of course. Or at least, second best: surrender. Or at the very least, take some time regaling me with why you won't, and maybe by the end you will.