Richard Russo Quotes

How can you do the right thing when you can't figure out what that is? When all you have before you are choices in various shades of wrong?

I know the difference between right and wrong, and I can tell good from bad. But I also know that the more difficult decisions come when we have to choose between good and better. The toughest calls of all are those we have to make between bad and worse.

Where great evils lie on all sides, it is very difficult to follow the best counsel.

In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.

I used to think I knew what was right and what was wrong, and who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are. Then the world got very gray, and I didn't know anything for a long time

The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule, between good and evil but between two evils.

To me, nothing is more vibrant than having the power to do something but not having the experience of knowing what's right and what's wrong.

Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods.

Sometimes you have to choose between a bunch of wrong choices and no right ones. You just have to choose which wrong choices feels the least wrong.

In the real world in which we live, you always have to choose between evils. And in choosing between evils, you have to have moral criteria for how to make those choices.

Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse.

Choices of right or wrong are not presented to you in black and white. If they were, I'm sure most people would choose white.

I love the gray area between right and wrong.

You can't play a bad person; you can only be a person who does bad things for the right reasons.

When a question has no correct answer, there is only one honest response. The gray area between yes and no. Silence.

As an actor, you're always in situations that can be compromising. But you can wipe away that gray area by making a choice.

Keep in mind, Eragon, that no one thinks himself a villain, and few make decisions they think are wrong. A person may dislike his choice, but he will stand by it because, even in the worst circumstances, he believes that it was the best option available to him at the time.

Every act has both good and evil results. The best we can do is lean to the light.

Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.

it's wrong to be right; it's right to be wrong.

Guilt is ever at a loss, and confusion waits upon it; when innocence and bold truth are always ready for expression.

Sometimes there are good reasons to do bad things.

The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy.

You have to do something bad to do something good.

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart...