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"I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long."
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"But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people--first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy."
"Like crying wolf, if you keep looking for sympathy as a justification for your actions, you will someday be left standing alone when you really need help."
"There is a third quality to friendship, and it is not as easy to put into a single word. The right word, literally, is 'sympathy' - sym-pathos, common passion. This means that friendships are discovered more than they are created at will."
"Sympathy is charming, but it does not make up for pain."
"Motherhood is at its best when the tender chords of sympathy have been touched."
"I sometimes get that wonderful sympathy between me and the audience, telling me I've reached their hearts. And when I do, the thrill is mine."
"A creative element is surely present in all great systems, and it does not seem possible that all sympathy or fundamental attitudes of will can be entirely eliminated from any human philosophy."
Explore more quotes by Richard Russo
"I think a lot of what is going on with kids who get pushed too far and attempt either murder or suicide is that they are trying to deal with their own non-existence for the people who are supposed to care most for them."
"HBO is really famous for hiring good people and staying out of their way until they ask for help, or need it. And that reputation is earned."
"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."
"I looked back at some of my earlier published stories with genuine horror and remorse. I got thinking, How many extant copies might there be, who owns them, and do they keep their doors locked?"
"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."
"I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody's fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about."
"If my career continues along its current arc, people will probably look at me and see a writer who is obsessed with the relationship between rich and poor and with how the rich somehow or other always manage to betray the poor, even when they don't mean to."
"By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets."
"A lot of my characters in all of my books have a self-destructive urge. They'll do precisely the thing that they know is wrong, take a perverse delight in doing the wrong thing."
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