Richard Russo Quotes

'Monsters,' everybody has the thought of monsters in your closet as a kid, and more importantly, the idea of becoming a parent. We're always kind of looking for those emotional nuggets. They're always at the heart of the story.

When you become a parent, you look at your parents differently. You look at being a child differently. It's an awakening, a revelation that you have.

As a parent, your perspective of childhood is through the eyes of this person that you care so much about and you just want the world to be great for them. You want their life to be easy and happy.

There are illegitimate parents, but I don't believe there are any illegitimate children.

You get to relive your childhood when you have a baby and you see these toys and these books you read when you were little - the innocence that you are able to maintain because you have to find that again in order to connect with your child keeps you in a special state of mind.

I always wanted my kids to like me and think I was funny, so I made up this story about a kid named Jake and his racecar that he had built from scratch, fully loaded with whatever fantastical gadget he or I wanted him to have at the moment. I loved making up the stories off the top of my head.

I think that if you become a parent, you stop being a child, and your position in relation to your parents changes.

The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it.

It's unconditional love with your kids.

Although I do not have a family, I have eyes, ears and imagination, and know, as most people know, that the importance of one's children is paramount.

And part of that is, what is the point of having children if you don't have the privilege of bringing them up?

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is.

Sometimes, if you don't have kids yourself, it's assumed you won't understand or know how to play a mom, which is kind of silly if you think about it.

When I wrote 'Runaways,' I was a naive kid who thought that all parents were evil. Now that I'm a wise old man with children of my own, I am certain that all parents are evil.

Children are our second chance to have a great parent-child relationship.

Now that I'm a father, I've forgiven my parents.

Well, I actually tell my son that I don't have any hair because he asked me the same question that I gave it to him when he was born, so he actually still believes that. He's five years old.

I have to keep reminding myself that I am their mother. Sometimes we are sitting at home and I feel like we are waiting for our mom to come home.

There are a lot of things that you don't realize that your parents are going through when you're a kid.

As kids, we grow up thinking our parents are perfect and flawless - well, some of us - but they're trying to do the best they can.

I was raised mostly by my mom.

Before I was a mother, when I played characters that were mothers, I used my imagination, of course.

Being a dad is like - there's nothing more important. So the exploration of that in stories, with parents and fathers and brothers, siblings, I just think that you're always in the terrain of love, whether it's absence of love or the giving of love or the desire for love.

I really don't know how to tell you what it feels like to be a parent.

So much of my work is about children and/or parenting; it's something I'm drawn to without being able to completely articulate why.