250 Quotes by Richard Ford

I'm trying to cause people to be interested in the particulars of their lives because I think that's one thing literature can do for us. It can say to us: pay attention. Pay closer attention. Pay stricter attention to what you say to your son.

Things happen when people are not where they belong, and the world moves forward and back by that principle.

A reader is entitled to believe what he or she believes is consonant with the facts of the book. It is not unusual that readers take away something that is spiritually at variance from what I myself experienced. That's not to say readers make up the book they want. We all have to agree on the facts. But readers bring their histories and all sets of longings. A book will pluck the strings of those longings differently among different readers.

My job is to have empathy and curiosity for things that I’ve never done. Also, I’m a person whom people talk to.

It’s hard to go through life without killing someone.

In order to write novels for a living – it’s not pathological, but I do think and worry and brood and fidget about stuff that I’m working on.

Most things don’t stay the way they are for very long. I take nothing for granted and try to be ready for the change that’s soon to come.

I’m kind of a distractible guy.

It’s odd how our fears, the ones we didn’t know we had, alter our sight line and make us see things that never were.