I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other. And what kind of satisfactions they derive from it. And why there is always a cost, and a price to be paid. – Richard Russo
Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me. – Richard Russo
You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical, its because I really dont 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. – Richard Russo
I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I dont have a lot of sympathy for because Im just going to be with them too long. – Richard Russo
Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a case like the present. – William Lloyd Garrison