250 Quotes by Richard Ford

There is no urge to touch, to kiss, to embrace. But I do it just the same. It is our last charm. Love isn’t a thing, after all, but an endless series of single acts.

Life is full of surprises, a wise man said, and would not be worth having if it were not.

I don’t have a very logical and orderly mind.

And it did seem strange to me because I was certain then what the difference was between what had happened and what hadn’t, and knew I always would be.

And there is no nicer time on earth than now – everything in the offing, nothing gone wrong, all potential – the very polar opposite of how I felt driving home the other night, when everything was on the skids and nothing within a thousand kilometers worth anticipating. This is really all life is worth, when you come down to it.

Love, Henry remembered thinking then, was a lengthy series of insignificant questions whose answers you couldn’t live without.

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.

I don’t look in mirrors anymore. It’s cheaper than surgery.

Loneliness, I’ve read, is like being in a long line, waiting to reach the front where it’s promised something good will happen. Only the line never moves, and other people are always coming in ahead of you, and the front, the place where you want to be, is always farther and farther away until you no longer believe it has anything to offer you.