Richard Russo Quotes

When I look back over my novels what I find is that when I think I'm finished with a theme, I'm generally not. And usually themes will recur from novel to novel in odd, new guises.

Richard Russo

• Novel
• Finished
• Generally

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• We have finished the job, what shall we do with the tools?

  

  Haile Selassie
  • Job
  • Tools
  • Finished

• A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he's finished.

  

  Zsa Zsa Gabor
  • Love
  • Man
  • Married

• In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.

  

  E. O. Wilson
  • Write
  • Novel
  • Southern

• Maybe some people, when they sit down to write their great novel or make their great record or paint their great painting, they have it all planned out in their head. But for me, it's never worked that way.

  

  Mike D The Beastie Boys
  • People
  • Record
  • Novel

• In five years' time I'd like to be a mum. I want to settle down and have a family, definitely sooner rather than later. I'd like to have finished my second album too, maybe even my third. I'd like a sound that sticks around that other people are inspired by and that people know is me.

  

  Adele
  • People
  • Time
  • Family

• The strange thing about writing is that it's so easy to write a novel. It is really easy. But it's getting there to the point where it's easy that's hard. The hard part is to get there.

  

  Karl Ove Knausgard
  • Writing
  • Strange
  • Point

• When starting to think about any novel, part of the motive is: I'm going to show them, this time.

  

  Kingsley Amis
  • Time
  • Show
  • Novel

• Before I studied story, I was trying to write a novel, and it was terrible. It wasn't going anywhere, and I couldn't figure out what I was trying to do. It was really hard; much harder than I thought it was going to be. Now that I've studied story, I think I'd have a different approach and maybe I could actually get it done.

  

  Donald Miller
  • Different
  • Trying
  • Done

• Things are not as they should be. Because He's not finished yet. They will be. Rest assured.

  

  R. C. Sproul, Jr.
  • Rest
  • Should
  • Finished

• I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for 'The Namesake,' I felt that it had to be a novel - it couldn't work as a story.

  

  Jhumpa Lahiri
  • Thinking
  • Ideas
  • Stories

• We have finished with this charter that has been with us for too long.

  

  Javier Solana
  • Finished
  • Charter
  • Too Long

• We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.

  

  John Gardner
  • Reading
  • Forget
  • Novel

• All my novels are very much directly related to my inner life, even though I'm inventing characters, even though it's fiction, even though it's make-believe, it nevertheless is coming out of the deepest recesses of myself.

  

  Paul Auster
  • Believe
  • Character
  • Fiction

• An image often propels the novel, gets it started. For me, it's an image that has a lot of emotion connected to it.

  

  Will Hobbs
  • Emotion
  • Novel
  • Connected

• Everyone deserves to be the hero of a novel.

  

  William Nicholson
  • Hero
  • Novel
  • Deserve

• My novels tend to come about from a fusion of two big ideas, creating a critical mass that then fissions, throwing off hundreds of other particles, riffs, tropes and characters.

  

  Will Self
  • Character
  • Bigs
  • Novel

• I will be sof brief, I have already finished.

  

  Salvador Dali
  • Finished
  • Brief

• Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.

  

  Charlotte Bronte
  • Women
  • Calm
  • Generally

• I have this prejudice that trilogies are long, three-volume novels.

  

  William Gibson
  • Long
  • Novel
  • Three

• The G7, just a European centric show, an Atlantic show, is fundamentally finished.

  

  Paul Keating
  • Shows
  • Finished

• I knew from previous books not to count on anything in terms of sales. My first novel - -The Raven's Bride, about Sam Houston's disastrous first marriage - -sold well and got attention, but my second book - -Promised Lands, about the Texas Revolution - -didn't.

  

  Elizabeth Crook
  • Attention
  • Marriage
  • Novel

• Meditation suffers from a towering PR problem.… If you can get past the cultural baggage, though, what you’ll find is that meditation is simply exercise for your brain.

  

  Dan Harris
  • Brain
  • Exercise
  • Meditation

• What do any of us ever truly know?

  

  David Markson
  • Know
  • Ever
  • Truly

• When I look back over my novels what I find is that when I think I'm finished with a theme, I'm generally not. And usually themes will recur from novel to novel in odd, new guises.

  

  Richard Russo
  • Novel
  • Finished
  • Generally