217 Quotes by Richard Russo

... Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak and that makes her a writer after my own heart.

When you don't know what to do, try something; if that doesn't work, try something else.

Where was the middle ground between a sense of adventure and just plain sense?

Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.

When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that's the end. Here's another who's never going to write well again.

I'll tell you one thing, though. It's a terrible thing to be a disappointment to a good woman.

One of the odd things about middle age, he concluded, was the strange decisions a man discovers he's made by not really making them, like allowing friends to drift away through simple neglect.

To his surprise, she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, a kiss so full of affection that it dispelled the awkwardness, even as it caused Miles' heart to plummet, because all kisses are calibrated, and this one revealed the great chasm between affection and love.

If you paid me for work," continued Max, whose rhetoric was more sophisticated than you might expect from a man with food in his beard, "I wouldn't have to feel worthless. There's not law says old people have to feel worthless all the while, you know. You paid me, I'd have some dignity." Now it was Mile's turn to nod and smile agreeably. "I think the dignity ship set sail a long time ago, Dad.