Richard Ford Quotes

It has taken me a long time to work out the function of ex-boyfriends, at least for me: how they can help you work out what you want from life and from a partner by showing you what you don't. If a man is your ex, it's better all round if he was not Mr. Right.

I don't keep diaries anymore; They're quite incriminating. I just keep all the dirt road diaries in my head.

It's hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I've learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

I hate looking backward, but every once in a while it sneaks up on you.

I was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life, in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs.

The fact is, I am in my third marriage and I do not believe in divorce. But I was half the problem, I guarantee you. More than half the problem. I couldn't negotiate with the other women.

To be human is to have a collection of memories that tells you who you are and how you got there.

I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.

I mean everybody's got ex-boyfriends and girlfriends. Everybody's got baggage.

I don't watch 'American Idol' - that'd be like getting divorced from somebody and then hanging out with them.

Only after I faced the unhappiness of my first marriage did I start on the path of personal growth.

All my life there's always been an ex-wife or a girlfriend.

I talk about past relationships in my book, all of which I would never regret, as they played huge parts in who I am today.

Everybody's got baggage, and not just the classic, 'Oh I have so much baggage,' but everyone comes with so much context, and you're not just dating a person: you're dating all their context, too. Part of relationships is negotiating each other's context.

I've been married three times. I married the girl next door when I was 22, and I wasn't a good husband, but I wasn't a good anything then. Nowadays, I'm much kinder.

I'm pretty sure we've all had a situation where a certain ex or person finds their way back in your life. I've realized that it's not about dwelling over it and overthinking.

Back to him she would never go, but in her lonely life still lived the sweet memory of that happy time when she believed in him and he was all in all to her.

Write about what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?

I get on with all my exes, so there's nothing I need to forget about. I don't know - life is shorter than it seems.

Bitterly I wondered if Hardy was going to overshadow every relationship for the rest of my life, haunting me like a ghost. I didn't know how to let him go. I'd never even had him.

You bring all you ever were and are to any relationship you have today.

Never be friends with your exes if you weren't friends with them before.

I find to my astonishment that an unhappy marriage goes on being unhappy when it is over.

You don't want to get rid of your experiences, because they're your experiences - good or bad - and you need them, but it would be great if they weren't on the video shelf!

Forget the dead, the past? O yet there are ghosts that may take revenge for it, memories that make the heart a tomb, regrets which gild thro’ the spirit’s gloom, and with ghastly whispers tell that joy, once lost, is pain.