Quotes from Richard Russo

It always amazed me how little he understood what I was feeling. It meant, among other things, that my understanding of him probably wasn't much better.

Enduring what couldn't be cured, she supposed, was what people meant by being adult, though it was ironic that so few of them—including her parents—had mastered the skill themselves.

The best she was able to do was to reflect that people invariably exhibited the very worst side of their flawed natures when invited to put their thoughts into writing, especially when the invitation was sanctioned hit-and-run posing as democracy in action.

The loss of a place isn't really so different from the loss of a person. Both disappear without permission, leaving the self diminished, in need of testimony and evidence. This happened. I was there.

A man could be surrounded by poetry readings and not know it.

Miss Beryl was not unaware of Mr. Wirfly's shortcomings, but she steadfastly maintained that he was not so much incompetent as unambitious, a character trait almost impossible to find in a lawyer.

Miss Beryl wondered if Sully would be amused. That probably depended on whether he knew what Lydia Pinkham's was. One of the problems of being eighth was that you built up a pretty impressive store of allusions. Other people didn't follow them, and they made it clear that this was your fault.

He hadn't even advised Peter about the existence of such women as this one he'd fallen in with, the kind who could make a man feel like something not quite a man and accomplish it in a way no other man, however jeering and contemptuous, could do.

Amazing, isn't it, when you think about it, how the world keeps on turning, no matter how fucked up things get?" In

It was for this reason he'd always felt that owning things was overrated. All you were doing was alleviating the disappointment of not owning them.

Anne herself was no stranger to adversity, but she had always hated any situation that could only be endured. She was able to summon the necessary courage for a bold, confident stroke, but simply getting by left her dispirited, and it seemed that the older she got, the more frequent these situations became.

witness the sad demise of fundamental Western values. Pride. Order. Personal responsibility.

I must be losing patience with my fellow humans," Miss Beryl went on. "Anymore I'm all for executing people who are mean to children. I used to favor just cutting off their feet. Now I want to rid the world of them completely. If this keeps up I'll be voting Republican soon.

Man starts thinking this late in life, no previous experience or proper guidance

At three in the morning Main Street was so quiet that Dallas could hear the street light change from red to green a block away. There was nothing sadder and lonelier in the world, he decided, especially when you were all alone when it happened.

More painful than her naivete is the fact that she doesn't believe herself to be naive. Should you make the mistake of asking her why she's doing something so stupid, she'll explain it to you.

The more he thought about it, life's truest meanings were all childhood meanings, childhood understandings of how things worked, what they were. Do we ever know as deeply as we know in childhood? Does adult life amount to anything more than a futile attempt to invalidate the deepest truths we know about ourselves and our world?

The old woman could inspire random violence moment to moment, but for the big things could be counted on, provided that sacrifice and not intervention was called for. Anne smiled to herself. There was, after all, something to be said for sacrifice.

To see a life back to front, as everyone begins to do in middle age, is to strip it of its mystery and wrap it in inevitability, drama's enemy.

True, Jedediah Halsey's Sans Souci hadn't been so much foolish as "visionary," which, as everyone knew, was what you called a foolish idea that worked anyway.

Once she started going to church, she couldn't stop. She attended Mass the way drunks went on binges. She couldn't get enough. In church she felt safe and secure. Not even my father would dare violate its cool, dark sanctity. She took me along for company.

When you tossed pebbles down from the embankment, they believed in God. One

I cannot imagine that my confessions impressed the good Monsignor, but for one reason or another, I was made an altar boy, and thereby brought into the inner sanctum of the church behind the lighted sacristy door. It was a profound disappointment. Nothing mysterious happened there, and if any plotting was done, I wasn't privy to it.

Protection was my strong suit. I needed something to be protected from. I