Richard Russo Quotes

I do think novels are overlooked. I did write one some years ago that I think is quite good, called 'The End of the Story,' not to blow my own horn.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

Iris Murdoch did influence my early novels very much, and influence is never entirely good.

There's no literary merit in my books.

The first novel I wrote was a monster - clocking in at 180,000 words - but it died a death, a death it deserved. It was called 'The Gods First Make Mad.' It was a good title, but it was the only good thing about the book. I didn't let that put me off.

The only pressure I feel is to write good books. And to not replicate the previous book. Whether you have a thousand readers or a million readers it doesn't change the pressure. I never feel tempted to give the reader what I think the reader wants.

You're not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.

We sometimes received - and I would read - 200 manuscripts a week. Some of them were wonderful, some were terrible; most were mediocre. It was like the gifts of the good and bad fairies.

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.

No one writes a great book every time out, or even a good book.

I love to read. And right now I'm on my last hundred pages of 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen, and I really enjoyed it. His writing is just - he's one of those writers where you just go, 'There are people just meant to be novel writers.'

Anyone aspiring to literary greatness should read 'New Grub Street' and weep.

I grew up in a working-class Catholic family in south Louisiana. I went to a state university. I taught literature, wrote a novel that was the novel I wanted to write, and got a couple of good reviews but no real traction. I had no idea how to get a job in TV.

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a rather foolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up and exhausted all the good that fiction could give and do.

A whole bunch of agents and editors looked at my stories, and they all said, in effect, 'You're a pretty good writer and you should probably get these published; when you grow up and write a novel, get in touch.'

I wanted to see if I could write a good book.

Oh you know, I've been writing a novel.

I had a very realistic expectation of the level of success that it was possible to attain writing romance novels.

I think playing the glamour card is a disastrous error as a literary writer.

It's really hard to be a story writer - no matter how much acclaim you get - and not write a novel.

I was born in the era of the novel. I've written many, as well as collections of poetry, and essays for mouthing off. I've written to inches, word-counts, page-counts, even the sonnet and the screenplay (which I call a plot poem). I write narrative. That's it. I just want to tell it.

Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.

A Marxist has never written a good novel.