217 Quotes by Richard Russo

Max would conclude, "that's who I want to be. The pope. And I'll do the same thing he does. I'll keep all the goddamn money.

...he had to comfort himself with the firm conviction that most of what he objected to in Mohawk and the world at large was not the result of people reading the wrong books, but rather of not reading any at all.

It was a scary thought. A man could be surrounded by poetry reading and not know it.

What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?

It’s not an easy time for any parent, this moment when the realization dawns that you’ve given birth to something that will never see things the way you do, despite the fact that it is your living legacy, that it bears your name.

What I discovered I liked best about striking out on my bicycle was that the farther I got from home, the more interesting and unusual my thoughts became.

You can't possibly judge your ability to control something until you've experienced the extremes of its capabilities. Do you understand?

One of the odd things about middle age...was the strange decisions a man discovers he’s made by not really making them.

No, Sully'd decided long ago to abstain from all but the most general forms of regret. He allowed himself the vague wish that things had turned out differently, without blaming himself that they hadn't, any more than he'd blamed himself when his 1-2-3 triple never ran like it should at least once. It didn't pay to second-guess every one of life's decisions, to pretend to wisdom about the past from the safety of the present, the way so many people did when they got older.