Richard Russo Quotes

Personally, I like films that make me a little bit uncomfortable because I think you're uncomfortable when something is real.

I never said I was an angel. Nor am I innocent or holy like the Virgin Mary. What I am is natural and serious and as sensitive as an open nerve on an ice cube.

I think you find universal truth when you get really honest with yourself and you can reach people. If you go deep enough, you have that core feeling, and that feeling can transcend the details of your experience.

I think to be honest, that being is inside. I meet that being in so many people that I meet everywhere in the world and when I do meet that being, in other people, what I want to ask is "How do we keep opening ourselves so that we can become as vulnerable and as willing to live in the deepest complexity and ambiguity and truth that we can?

In a memoir, I think, the contract implies a certain degree of truth. I think you have to be as true to your memory and your experience as you possibly can.

I like playing characters that are complex, that are intriguing, that come from left field, that do things that are unexpected. I don't like people who just follow one line and that's it - that's why I could never be in a sitcom, I don't think. They're not intriguing enough for me.

I come out of real life.

I thought he was an interesting central figure, central character, one who is definitely not your typical central character figure in a film, who's easy to like. He's not easy to like. It forces you to involve yourself with what's going on.

Connecting dots is not that rewarding of an experience.

With Twitter, you just want to make people laugh in their meeting; on stage, people have paid for their tickets with their hard-earned money, so I owe them the truth as I experience it.

You don't cheat anybody out of their experience, whatever it is.

I don't write anything that I haven't lived. In terms of integrity, you have to write what you live. And if you write beyond what you live, it is theory. And theory is not helpful. It is just not.

I speak my mind. If it offends some people, well, there's not much I can do about that. But I'm going to be honest. I'm going to continue to speak my mind, and that's who I am.

I don't know if I'm very complicated at all. I wish I was. I wish I was one of these deep, intricate people. But I just love having fun really.

Anyone who wants simple, pat stories should buy another author's product. The real universe ain't that way, and neither are my fictive ones.

I've always seen writing as a way of telling the truth. For me, writing is about truth. I have always tried to be faithful to my own experience.

I'm attracted to polarizing characters who upend the civility of life.

I'm well aware that I have been described in some quarters as being 'enigmatic, taciturn, prickly, explosive and forbidding'. Well, I have my moods like anyone else; I won't deny it.

If you write, write about what you do and who you are, and you can't be wrong. Don't lie about anything. You are very similar to everybody else in the world. You love, you hate, you have friends, you have enemies. Be who you are.

I feel as though there are things that I'm trying to do - you know, capturing truthfully some aspect of human experience - and I'm trying really hard not to be fake. And in writing, as in life, it's harder than you think.

I know that Liz Meriwether likes to keep things as honest and complicated as life can be, which is really fun for all of us.

I feel like you can't really be truthful as an artist and empathize with the human experience unless you know your truth, and you're not living a lie.

I play antihero; I play hero... I'm not image-struck.

Sequels are always tricky.

I'm not going to tone down my rhetoric, and I'm not going to censor myself in sharing what I believe to be the truth. People could either love that or hate that, but I'm not really interested in playing games in order to appeal to a broader audience.