250 Quotes by Richard Ford

I was born into an ordinary, modern existence in 1945, an only child to decent parents of no irregular point of view, no particular sense of their place in history’s continuum, just two people afloat on the world and expectant like most others in time, without a daunting conviction about their own consequence.

This is the only badge of true friendship I’m sure of: not to be curious.

I realized I loved you, and I didn’t want to be married to somebody I didn’t love. I wanted to be married to you. It isn’t all that complicated.

Would you think he was anybody like you?

I’ve been mainly a happy boy in my life. I married the right girl and we did what we wanted to do.

No words came out of me. Words can also be the feeblest emissaries for our feelings.

Our sympathies are most required when they seem least due.

Our parents’ lives, even those enfolded in obscurity, offer us our first, strong assurance that human events have consequence. Here we are, after all.

Unbridled commerce isn’t generally pretty, but it’s always forward-thinking.