Quotes from Richard Ford

Americans don't have saner gun laws because most Americans, including those citizens who puzzle over better angels, don't want saner gun laws.

I'm not one of those people who as a writer lets my characters tell me what they want to do or call to me or seek me. I go seeking for things, using them as an agent, really.

It's interesting to leave a place, interesting even to think about it. Leaving reminds us of what we can part with and what we can't, then offers us something new to look forward to, to dream about.

If I could have married my wife and been a sports writer for the past 30 years, I wouldn't be sitting here - but I don't think I'd be sitting someplace where I was sorry to be sitting.

I haven't scoured Dixie out of my voice. But I don't think that the books that I have written... have really in any way been Southern in character.

Married life requires shared mystery even when all the facts are known.

Writing never came naturally and I still have to force my hand to do it.

I decided early on that I wanted to participate in the greater American experience, rather than the parochial one in Mississippi. But I have an urge as a writer to meld the Southern experience into the larger American one.

I don't have a very logical and orderly mind.

Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.

Fear and hope are alike underneath.

And I think that in myself (and perhaps evident in what I write) fear of loss and the corresponding instinct to protect myself against loss are potent forces.

You can't always go to the well and have things be funny.