Richard Russo Quotes

I'm more into describing a scenario and I move around in that scenario.

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

I feel like my brain is more geared towards a novel than it is to a movie.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

I love telling stories. Creating a character, a world, a whole universe out of nothing. That part I can't get enough of.

Sometimes my lyrics may describe a situation that happened to a friend. Other times, I create a story from the ground up.

I love stories. I just enjoy telling stories and watching what these characters do - although writing continues to be just as hard as it always was.

I like to think that I am telling a story rather than writing it.

When I'm writing, I'm creating the story and its character with words. I'm thinking about what the pictures will be like, but I never begin to sketch. The pictures are all in my head.

To me there's no difference between a book of stories and a novel - they're just slightly different shapes.

A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.

A short story is one idea; a novel is a whole soup of them.

I am really excited by the form of short fiction.

Writers don't write about people they know. They write what they know about people.

I never set out to write literature; I set out to tell stories. And some of my work may be very raunchy and very bloodthirsty - but life, for me, is a violent thing.

I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.

My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.

To tell a good story and to illuminate the world: the two things are completely linked. That is the point. That is what I've always wanted to do.

I love stories - devising them, writing them, reading them, watching them, being a part of them.

I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.

When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'

I was always inventing characters and making up stories.

I'm a storyteller, not a prophet. I'm just interested in a good story.