Richard Ford Quotes

My job is to have empathy and curiosity for things that I've never done. Also, I'm a person whom people talk to.

Maybe I'm a serial regional writer. First here, then there, across the map.

I started reading literature at 17 or 18, and I felt this extra beat to life.

The world is a more engaging and less dramatic place than writers ever give it credit for being

At heart, of course, a story itself is consolation's instrument.

I've been mainly a happy boy in my life. I married the right girl and we did what we wanted to do.

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

Paul Ryan's just a really, deeply evil little creature. But he's not little; he's actually quite tall, I'm sorry to see. I'm always sorry when really bad guys are tall.

To write you had to read so I backed into reading.

I get very involved in the internal logic of sentences.

I grew up in Mississippi being told it was a great place, but not feeling that. When I finally began reading seriously, literature showed me something about where I was from which was worthwhile.

When I write a novel I start each morning by reading for 20 minutes.

I wouldn't be a very good writer if someone hadn't taught me how to read.

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.

Even though I get a lot done with my solitude, and I make the best use of it possible, I always think solitude is an interlude in a period of time, which is populated by others.

My father died in my arms. That's tumult. That's everything exploding.

She was an artist. She held opposites in her mind.

I think once you love somebody, you love somebody; that's just how it is.

Most things don't stay the way they are for very long. I take nothing for granted and try to be ready for the change that's soon to come.

I didn't feel up to writing about 9/11. If I were to write about it, it would take me years.

Only sometimes you can't feel anything about a subject without hypothesizing its extinction.

If there's another thing that sportswriting teaches you, it is that there are no transcendent themes in life. In all cases things are here and they're over, and that has to be enough.

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.

For, how else to seize such an instant? How to shout out into the empty air just the right words, and on cue? Frame a moment to last a lifetime?

The pace of life feels morally dangerous to me.

Happiness for me is getting to write about the most important things I know.

In their faces--plenty of them were handsome, but ruined--I've seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves.

The saved moment is the true art of love.

He was like my father. They each wanted me to be their audience, to hear the things they needed to express.

We do not, after all, deal in truths, only potentialities. Too much truth can be worse than death, and last longer.

She ordered a martini and encouraged me to, but said she couldn't drink it with her medication. She just liked seeing it in front of her, like the old days, all set to do its little magic.

My parents...were people running from the past, who didn't look back at much if they could help it, and whose whole life always lay somewhere in the offing.

For writers - even sportswriters - bad news is always easier than good, since it is, after all, more familiar.

Possibly in the lobby she saw someone who reminded her too much of herself (that can happen to inexperienced travelers). Or worse. That no one there reminded her of anyone she ever knew.

We are past the end of things now, but I don't want to leave.

Something draws you... An impatience with your own ignorance.