Richard Russo Quotes

Since her retirement from teaching Miss Beryl’s health had in many respects greatly improved, despite her advancing years. An eighth-grade classroom was an excellent place to snag whatever was in the air in the way of illness. Also depression, which, Miss Beryl believed, in conjunction with guilt, opened the door to illness. Miss Beryl didn’t know any teachers who weren’t habitually guilty and depressed-guilty they hadn’t accomplished more with their students, depressed that very little more was possible.

I’m delighted by how Nobody’s Fool turned out. It was a rare movie.

I’m not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it’s been my experience that most people don’t want to be entertained. They want to be comforted.

To his surprise, she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, a kiss so full of affection that it dispelled the awkwardness, even as it caused Miles’ heart to plummet, because all kisses are calibrated, and this one revealed the great chasm between affection and love.

In the end it all came down to companionship, to friendship, to sacrifice, to compromise.

Cary Grant never won an Oscar, primarily, I suspect, because he made everything look so effortless. Why reward someone for having fun, for being charming?

People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.

Worse, I have to admit to feeling the jealousy of one crab for another that has managed to climb out of the barrel.

You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical, it’s because I really don’t know how it works, but I trust that it does. I try to write the way I read, in order to find out what happens next.

To his surprise he also discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something, whether painting or poetry, that you cared about a great deal.

Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression ‘I have to say’, what follows usually needn’t be said?

People in small towns, much more than in cities, share a destiny.