Richard Price Quotes & Sayings

I'd love to be a saxophonist. I don't know why, but I pretend I'm the saxophonist when I listen to music. I have about as much chance playing the sax as I do learning how to fly. — Richard Price

Rocco drove up the West Side until they reached the Port Authority Bus Terminal. — Richard Price

Year they even sacrificed a great buffalo whose burned bones spelled 'murder,' but the tapping — Richard Price

Is he comin' here? — Richard Price

As he reached for his Visa card, the security monitor next to the register caught Billy in all his glory: football burly but slump-shouldered, his pale face with its exhaustion-starred eyes topped with half a pitchfork's worth of prematurely graying hair. He was only forty-two, but that crushed-cellophane gaze of his combined with a world-class insomniac's posture had once gotten him into a movie at a senior citizen's discount. — Richard Price

As a reminder to himself that at forty-three you don't make plans to dabble in different lives. At forty-three, what you are, what you know, is about as far as you're going to go in this life; — Richard Price

Because, man, if this city ain't Caleb's mountain, I don't know what is, and those giants out there are just stomping people into the ground. — Richard Price

In the beginning - not now, thank God - Patty was always sharing the important books of her life with him, like Black Elk Speaks, The Golden Bough, and Hero with a Thousand Faces. — Richard Price

You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road. — Richard Price

Whatever. Nothin', nothin' at all. I'm sittin' there thirty minutes just waitin'. — Richard Price

Later that night it took him most of a bottle of Chartreuse to work up the resolve to quit drinking. — Richard Price

tremble. "Anyway, he starts following — Richard Price

You can't take a character anywhere they don't expect the character to go. But within those confines is where creativity lies. — Richard Price

I started thinking about my relationship with my students; I'm this guy who comes in from book - and movie - land and descends on angel wings into their classroom. — Richard Price

I think the definition of an artist is not necessarily tied into excellence or talent; an artist is somebody who, if you took away their freedom to make art, would lose their mind. — Richard Price

The more I hung out with detective squads, the more there was always one guy or two guys or a woman who had a case that they were the primary on years ago, it was never solved, and they take that case into their retirements. — Richard Price

Out here?" he said quietly. "What?" The kid looked stricken. "Have I not treated you like a man out — Richard Price

He also knew he would never come back all the way with her. — Richard Price

Although the clientele were primarily the Eloi of the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, an incident a month earlier had involved a platinumed-out crew of Bronx Morlocks: — Richard Price

Strike experienced a moment of pure clarity: he would never make it out of here, would never rise above his current position as Rodney's lieutenant, because all the intelligence and prudence and vision came to nothing if it wasn't tempered and supported by a certain blindness, an oblivious animal will that Rodney had, that he, Strike, did not have.
Rodney would survive all this not because of his guts or his brains, but because he understood that there was no real life out here on the street, no real lives other than his own, and that what really mattered was coming first in all things, in all ways and at all costs. — Richard Price

Rocco watched Strike limp into the human slipstream of Eighth Avenue, watched him negotiate his way through lowlifes and taxpayers until he disappeared inside the terminal doors without a backward glance. — Richard Price

If you're writing a book that takes place in New York in the moment, you can't not write about 9-11; you can't not integrate it. My main character's view is the Statue of Liberty and the Trade Center. It doesn't have to take over, but it has to be acknowledged. — Richard Price

Strike said "Huh" again, thinking about betrayal, about how everything and everybody were just so much smoke. — Richard Price

I can never read this book, just like I can never see a movie that I wrote a screenplay for. I can read it and see it physically, but I can't accurately judge it. I'm too close to it. If I read it ten times I'll have ten different reactions. — Richard Price

The only place a man can be truly handicapped is in his mind, and that a man who can conquer his own mind has got the world at his feet. — Richard Price

The first thing to look out for after your first big success are drugs and screenplays. — Richard Price

Some day, my son, you are going to learn that the two greatest joys of being a man are beating the hell out of someone and getting the hell beaten out of you, good night. — Richard Price

Yeah, but I ain't worried about it, Rodney said, — Richard Price

Rocco loving them both so much that he knew he'd never tell a soul about this moment, just take it to bed with him every night for years, like a miser's secret stash of gold. — Richard Price

I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam. — Richard Price

I write because I can't imagine not writing. — Richard Price

I have offices all over the place and I avoid work everywhere. I don't like to write - I like to be finished. — Richard Price

Balloons, all blown up. How, where and why he got — Richard Price

Don't they watch the news? Uranus isn't even a planet anymore. — Richard Price

On the nights they went to bed at the same time, Rocco would lie there and watch her go to the closet, watch her choose either silky slips or mannish shirts, like running up sex flags from across the room. — Richard Price

Threw a fence up and called it the Bronx Zoo. — Richard Price

Saturday was a sweet and sunny day, the kind that made people think about getting it together once and for all
health, kids, jobs, personal appearance, doing things right this time. — Richard Price

In a given scene I may know nothing more than how it's supposed to end, most of the time not even that. Scenes are improvised. A character does or says something, and with as much spontaneity and schizophrenia as I can muster, another character responds. In this way, everything I write is spontaneous chain reaction and I'm running around playing leapfrog in my brain trying to "be" all my people. — Richard Price

falafel joint, jazz joint, gyro joint, corner. Schoolyard, creperie, realtor, corner. Tenement, tenement, tenement museum, corner. Pink Pony, Blind Tiger, muffin boutique, corner. Sex shop, tea shop, synagogue, corner. Bollywood, Buddha, botanica, corner. Leather outlet, leather outlet, leather outlet, corner. Bar, school, bar, school. People's Park, corner. Tyson mural, Celia Cruz mural, Ladi Di mural, corner. Bling shop, barbershop, car service corner. — Richard Price

The sky continued to almost imperceptibly lighten, the birds coming on in earnest now, dozens of them barreling low from tree to tree over the crime scene as if they were stringing beads. — Richard Price

Tremble, all ye oppressors of the world! — Richard Price

Boxes on the shelves. "He's seein' this chick, Annette, Annette Palladino." Chubby's eyes fluttered at half-mast as if someone had just shoved smelling salts under his nose. He looked down at his shoes and shook his head. "Hey, you know her?" Butler turned from the shelves. Chubby nodded without looking up. "She gives the best underage blowjob this side a Harlem. — Richard Price

Being nice, setting him up. The glow in his belly got redder, but he also felt a new pain, a stabbing sensation, as if someone was in — Richard Price

The kind of event on a conveyor belt that causes a fire occurs in a variety of industrial environments, not uniquely in coal environments. — Richard Price

It was time to chuck this life, with its Jo-Jos and Rodneys, its bloody burning children and walking-dead parents, just kick dirt over the whole show, like a cat burying its shit. — Richard Price

There's some people in this room right now," Pavlicek said, "who gave twenty years or more to the Job, myself included. We've seen it all, handled it all, and when a young person dies we've all walked up the stairs, knocked on the doors, and delivered the news, between us, to an army of parents. We've caught them on their way to the floor, carried them into the bedroom or living room, then gone into their kitchens and brought them water - over the years, an ocean of water, glass by glass by glass. And so, after all that, we think we understand what it must feel like to be one of those parents, but we don't. We can't. I still can't. But I'm getting there. — Richard Price

If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing. Then it's a constant spreading out of that five minutes. — Richard Price

Rocco was gripped with the panic he often experienced around her, around himself. He seemed to be both here now and simultaneously five years in the future looking back at this moment, at the loss of this moment. He was always sliding past the nowness of being with her, throwing himself at her like a cranked-up insincere clown for an exhausting fifteen minutes a day or getting cozy with booze in order to achieve the proper mood, and from the time she was born he had felt he was on his deathbed, remembering with regret how skittish and slippery his time with her had been. Had been, as if she were a hard thirty-seven and divorced instead of a two-year old baby, as if he were eighty-six and senile instead of forty-three and slightly overweight. — Richard Price

I write because I write - as anyone in the arts does. You're a painter because you feel you have no choice but to paint. You're a writer because this is what you do. — Richard Price

His voice was languidly dense, as if he was a little slow on the uptake, but Strike knew that tone came from the man's feeling of complete control. — Richard Price

Almost nobody made it out of the game in one piece, and almost everybody thought they would be the exception. — Richard Price

Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day. — Richard Price

And what is the religion of many persons but a kind of demonism that delights in human sacrifices and causes them to look with horror on the greatest part of mankind? Plutarch, it is well known, has observed very justly that it is better not to believe in a god than to believe him to be a capricious and malevolent being. — Richard Price

In the beginning, there wasn't a physical position or a sexual fancy off limits, but as they grew more comfortable with each other, it always seemed like straight-up missionary, after a little of this and a little of that, unfailingly ended with both of them afterward euphorically raiding the refrigerator in search of the next fun thing to do. — Richard Price

As the industry has matured, real estate has become a very accepted investment. Institutions have used core investments to get comfortable with real estate as an asset class, and now that they're comfortable they're moving up the risk spectrum. — Richard Price

Infinitesimally but with — Richard Price

I love Israel, I go back all the time. I just love New York a little more. My workers are Arabs, my best friend is a black man from Alabama, my girlfriend's a Puerto Rican, and my landlord is a half-Jew bastard. You know what I did this morning? I read in the paper yesterday that the circus is setting up in the Madison Square Garden, they said the elephants would be walking through the Holland Tunnel at dawn. I'm a photographer a little too, you know? So I get up at five o'clock, bike over to the tunnel, and wait. It turns out the paper got it wrong, they came through the Lincoln, but still, you know? This is a hell of a place. — Richard Price

Yeah, uh-huh." "OK. Were you coming from a store or something when you saw him?" "Naw, I was like, coming from the benches." "And where was he? — Richard Price

Beat him, eat him and get out. — Richard Price

Naw, I was like, coming from the benches. — Richard Price

I don't write police stories, per se, but I usually write about areas that are very panoramic, like Harlem, or the Lower East Side, or a small urban city like Jersey City. — Richard Price

On the roof of the Accord again, then bent down, pressed his face against the driver's — Richard Price

I do small cameos here and there but nothing that requires more than a paragraph of talking, because I'm just an amateur. The movie is a whole different reality. — Richard Price

The County Jail looked like a tall, forbidding elementary school. Seven stories of dirty brown brick, one hundred years old and now operating at 330 percent of capacity. — Richard Price

The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance. — Richard Price

You saw him, said hello, how's tricks . . . — Richard Price

feel you're asking him incriminating — Richard Price

He restrained himself from another wisecrack, infinitesimally but with great effort attempting to close down his nightclub approach to education; every positive change in his life, every minute increment in character, acquired more or less through shame. — Richard Price

Worked with his father and uncle. He — Richard Price

Lorenzo thinking that he truly liked Jesse, always had. — Richard Price

Indians, man, they were so tough they useta eat steak with a spoon." "I hate steak," said Tyrone. — Richard Price

were the worst - flirting with other guys in — Richard Price

York. Self-conscious about his own corrupted dimensions, he pushed himself away from the table and trotted across the traffic to the store. He almost sprained his wrist pushing on the locked door, then jumped a little at the delayed buzz of electronic permission. To Bind an Egg was about the size of — Richard Price

Everybody was full of shit in this game. The cops bullshitted each other, the dealers bullshitted each other, the cops bullshitted the dealers, the dealers bullshitted the cops, the cops took bribes, the dealers ratted each other out. Nobody knew for sure which side anybody was on; no one really knew how much or how little money anybody else was making. Everything was smoke. — Richard Price

Stipulation that she be sent home to her — Richard Price

About Annette from?" He stood up, ditched his cigarette. "What's the difference?" "I wanna know, Chubby. Who the hell is goin' aroun' reportin' my business to the papers?" Chubby shrugged. "I ran into your friend Bobby." "Butler?" Stony stamped around the room. Chubby hooked his arm. "Hey, don't get your balls in a uproar, it just — Richard Price

While before deciding to make the rounds of — Richard Price

Splattered all over the wall, come right up off his feet like a pulled puppet just — Richard Price