Russo Quotes & Sayings

The problem with the contemplative life was that there was no end to contemplation, no fixed time limit after which thought had to be transformed into action. Contemplation was like sitting on a committee that seldom made recommendations and was ignored when it did, a committee that lacked even the authority to disband. — Richard Russo

Like I said, what makes people tick isn't neccessarily what makes them good. Fast-forward, — Richard Russo

But as those who do hold Trump to the standards of any other person have found out on Twitter and other social media outlets these Trump followers are a nasty fascistic lot. Dowd is lucky he didn't get death threats like Kurt Eichenwald. Or maybe he did and refuses to acknowledge them. If you voted for Trump and continue to support him and you think you are better than these bigoted virulent trolls, you're not. Your silence enables them just as it did in the racist campaign that Trump and Bannon ran. In fact, hiding behind a civilized veneer in your support of fascism I consider more dangerous. We're past describing you as collaborators at this point. That lets you off the hook. You're Russo-American oligarchical theocratic fascists. — Kevin Sessums

I always go into a film situation depressed and fearful. — Rene Russo

(God) seemed to know everything that was in her heart and to understand that nothing dwelt there that wasn't absolutely necessary to her survival. — Richard Russo

ragged piece of thin glass jutted out of the socket, all that was left of the — Richard Russo

I have nothing against younger women and older men on screen. What is sad is that so many women over 40 who have so much to give aren't being considered to play opposite men their own age or younger. — Rene Russo

It's not an easy time for any parent, this moment when the realization dawns that you've given birth to something that will never see things the way you do, despite the fact that it is your living legacy, that it bears your name. — Richard Russo

What can I do to take my company to the next level?" The answer, my friend, is simple: make your organization Invisible! — Mitch Russo

The attraction of cynicism was that it so often put you in the right, as if being right led directly to happiness. — Richard Russo

The sun woke Tino early this beautiful morning in his small Italian village. — Tonya Russo Hamilton

Stories worked much the same way ... A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation. — Richard Russo

To his surprise he ... discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something ... that you cared about a great deal. — Richard Russo

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? — Richard Russo

It's very rare in our lives that we're like "Ooh, I'm going to really screw this family up." You just don't. You work from a place of need, like I want to finish this movie or I want to feel loved at that moment or I need empathy right now. And then, you do things that are questionable. — Ry Russo-Young

His shadow stretched out past mine. I remembered Mom telling me how frightening men were, all men really, how helpless it often felt to be a woman among men, and for the first time I understood what she meant. — Meredith Russo

I think I'm allergic or something. I feel kinda strange... sort of floaty and light-headed."

"You ain't sick, hon," Mom said. She kissed me cheek and hugged me so tight I thought I might break a rib. "That's joy. — Meredith Russo

I envy my daughter's childhood. — Rene Russo

Because the truth is, we never know for sure about ourselves. Who we'll sleep with if given the opportunity, who we'll betray in the right circumstance, whose faith and love we will reward with our own ... Only after we've done a thing do we know what we'll do ... — Richard Russo

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

It pleased him to imagine God as someone like his mother, someone beleagured by too many responsibilities, too dog-tired to monitor an energetic boy every minute of the day, but who, out of love and fear for his safety, checked in on him whenever she could. Was this so crazy? ... Miles liked the idea of a God who, when He at last had the oppotunity to return His attention to His children, might shake His head with wonder and mutter, "Jesus. Look what they're up to now." A distractible God, perhaps, one who'd be startled to discover so many of His children way up in trees since the last time He looked. A God whose hand would go rushing to His mouth in fear in that instant of recognition that - good God! - that kid's going to hurt himself. A God who could be surprised by unanticipated pride - glory be, that boy is a climber! — Richard Russo

Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component. — Richard Russo

In high school, I was very unpopular. — Rene Russo

I was pretty dead set against ever writing an academic novel. It's always been my view that there are already more than enough academic novels and that most of them aren't any good. Most of them are self-conscious and bitter, the work of people who want to settle grudges. — Richard Russo

If you don't allow freedom, then you can't have freedom. — Aaron Russo

Was anything in the world truer than that intuitive leap of the heart? — Richard Russo

... a story is like a virus that can rage only for as long as there are new hosts to infect. — Richard Russo

On the second to last day, Lt. Russo, who ran the program, announced, "Unless you were at dinner last night and had the opportunity to say 'Howard, pass the salt,' you are going to Brooklyn North and Manhattan North. That's where they need people, and that's where you're going." "Howard" referred to to the Commissioner Safir, and when they read the list of assignments the next afternoon
"Alvarez ... Brooklyn North ... "
"Baker ... Brooklyn North ... "
"Buono ... Manhattan North ... "
"Calderon ... Brooklyn North ... "
"Conlon ... South Bronx Initiative ... "
more than a few people turned around to look. Howard, pass the salt. I was a little surprised myself. — Edward Conlon

My mom worked for Lockheed Corp. in Burbank as an inspector of airplane parts. To help make ends meet, Dee, a friend of my mom's from Lockheed, moved in. She was a lovely person and helped with our care for many years. — Rene Russo

Unfortunately, the optimistic view that "classical civilization" handed down certain fundamental works that managed to include the knowledge contained in the lost writings has proved groundless. In fact, in the face of a general regression in the level of civilization, it's never the best works that will be saved through an automatic process of natural selection. — Lucio Russo

A couple years ago, the novelist Russell Banks told me he was reading the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. I asked why. He said, 'Because I've always wanted to and am tired of having my reading assigned.' I thought it was a marvelous declaration of independence. — Richard Russo

Since UFO stands for "unidentified flying object", the word ufology means approximately "knowledge about unknown flying objects", and is therefore a "science" whose content is void by definition. Similar considerations hold for parapsychology. — Lucio Russo

I had to fend for myself from the time I was 17 years old. I was a high-school dropout. I wasn't quite living on the streets, but I didn't have a lot of hope. — Rene Russo

Strong and in control - I don't necessarily feel that way. I'm a little bit more scattered in my life. I'm more of a street girl, in a way. — Rene Russo

I'm more convinced each day of the complete unreality of the material world and the supreme vitality of the invisible world of spirit. — Paul Russo

The end goal is to get everybody chipped, to control the whole society, to have the bankers and the elite people control the world. — Aaron Russo

Straight Man: But my daughter belongs to a talk show generation that seems to be losing the ability to discriminate between public and private woes. — Richard Russo

Because if you were God, it stood to reason your real enemy would be boredom. Sully — Richard Russo

I'm a California girl, and I'd love to restore a sense of place to Southern California. — Rene Russo

What does it feel like to be a parent? What does it feel like to be a child? And that's what stories do. They bring you there. They offer a dramatic explanation, which is always different from an expository explanation. — Richard Russo

I wondered when I'd reach the end of things I didn't know. * — Meredith Russo

There is so much more than that little space from 14 to 40. And if you cut that off and begin to believe that you are not good past a certain age, then you end up scared and insecure and afraid. That is definitely NOT beautiful. — Rene Russo

I have an unusual face. — Rene Russo

About 15 years ago I went though a period of a year or so when I just couldn't find anything good. My wife noticed I was having trouble reading menus. I bought some cheap reading glasses in a drug store. I got home and suddenly all these books that weren't good were good. — Richard Russo

Studies have shown that empathy is a vital life skill that helps determine our success even more than a high IQ does. — Kim Russo

The truth is, we never know for sure about ourselves. Who we'll sleep with if given the opportunity, who we'll betray in the right circumstance, whose faith and love we will reward with our own. Only after we've done a thing do we know what we'll do ... Which is why we have spouses and children and parents and colleagues and friends, because someone has to know us better than we know ourselves. — Richard Russo

that you think makes you so complicated couldn't make me — Meredith Russo

Just 'cause I'm bi doesn't mean I have magic powers. I'm not the plucky queer sidekick in your romantic comedy. — Meredith Russo

Today Eratosthenes' method [of calculating the circumference of the earth] seems almost banal ... yet it is inaccessible to prescientific civilizations, and in all of Antiquity not a single Latin author succeeded in stating it coherently. — Lucio Russo

I do love acting the two seconds that you are in front of the camera - and this is going to sound like I'm complaining, and I don't want that because I'm blessed to even have a job - but there is a lot of down-time when you're just sitting in your trailer. — Rene Russo

I would have loved to do romantic comedies. That's what I think I would be best at. — Rene Russo

When my nose finally stops bleeding and I've disposed of the bloody paper towels, Teddy Barnes insists on driving me home in his ancient Honda Civic, a car that refuses to die and that Teddy, cheap as he is, refuses to trade in. — Richard Russo

Marty Russo was too good a golfer to be a servant of the people. — Dan Jenkins

I wondered if joy could ever be felt by itself without being tainted with fear and confusion, or if some level of misery was a universal constant, like the speed of light. — Meredith Russo

For Miles, one of the great mysteries of marriage was that you had to actually say things before you realized they were wrong. Because he'd been saying the wrong thing to Janine for so many years, he'd grown wary, testing most of his observations in the arena of his imagination before saying them out loud, but even then he was often wrong. Of course, the other possibility was that there was no right thing to say, that the choice wasn't between right and wrong but between wrong, more wrong, and as wrong as you can get. Wrong, all of it, to one degree or another, by definition, or by virtue of the fact that Miles himself was the one saying it. — Richard Russo

It was my opinion (then and now) that two people who love each other need not necessarily have the same dreams and aspirations, but they damn well ought to share the same nightmares. — Richard Russo

Miss Beryl: Doesn't it bother you that you haven't done more with the life God gave you?
Sully: Not often. Now and then. — Richard Russo

People actually seemed to enjoy recalling that on a Saturday afternoon forty years ago Empire Avenue was bustling with people and cars and commerce, whereas now, of course, you could strafe it with automatic weapons and not harm a soul. — Richard Russo

You want a poke in the eye with a sharp stick?" Sully offered. "You don't have a stick," Will pointed out. — Richard Russo

So what? Few men, Miles reflected, lived so comfortably within the confines of a two.word personal philosophy. — Richard Russo

When you don't know what to do, try something; if that doesn't work, try something else. — Richard Russo

You can't plead tolerance for gays by saying that they're just like everyone else. Tolerance is something we should extend to people who are not like everyone else. — Vito Russo

She couldn't quite see herself in it. When they were done, I read the Shakespeare sonnet that begins "Fear no more the heat o' the Sun," partly because it was appropriate to the occasion and one of the most beautiful poems in the language, but also because I hoped it might hide from my loved ones the fact that I myself had nothing to say, that while part of me was here with them on this beloved shore, another part was wandering, as it had been for months, in a barren, uninhabited landscape not unlike the one in my dream. I realized I'd felt like this for a while. Though life had gone on since my mother's death - Kate had gotten married, I'd finally published another book and gone on tour with it - some sort of internal-pause button had been pushed, allowing another part of me, one I'd specifically kept sequestered to deal with my mother, to fall silent. Since her death, Barbara and I had gone through all her things and settled her affairs, but we'd barely spoken of her. — Richard Russo

These are not men of great imagination, but one can hardly blame them for not being prepared for this particular contingency, the sight of a tweet-jacketed, tenured, middle-aged, senior professor and department chair in a fake nose and glasses, brandishing a live, terrified goose ... (Richard Russo, Straight Man) — Richard Russo

Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation. — Richard Russo

Unfortunately, I think depression and anxiety are really hard to live with. And what people don't need is to feel bad about themselves because they decide to go on medication. — Rene Russo

Which is why we have spouses and children and parents and colleagues and friends, because someone has to know us better than we know ourselves. We need them to tell us. We need them to say, I know you, Al. You are not the kind of man who. — Richard Russo

My God, he couldn't help thinking, how terrible it is to be that age, to have emotions so near the surface that the slightest turbulence causes them to boil over. That, very simply, was what adulthood must be all about
acquiring the skill to bury things more deeply. Out of sight and, whenever possible, out of mind. — Richard Russo

I began to develop a firm conviction that most efforts to teach people things were wasted. All they needed was to go off some place quiet and read. Around — Richard Russo

The Russo brothers are the best people ever, and they cast me in 'Happy Endings.' I did text Joe Russo to say, 'I don't think my character dies, so if you need a local news cameraman to show up in 'Captain America 2' ... I know it doesn't make sense, but just hear me out on this!' He was really cool about it and turned me down right away. — Adam Pally

That she should so puzzled him that he even questioned his behavior, entertaining, albeit briefly, the idea that he might in some fashion be responsible for the apparition of his once loving wife, who had faithfully awaited his return from overseas, now calmly and purposefully blasting away, without visible remorse, in the general direction of his life and property. They — Richard Russo

Maybe it's that I'm naive, but I don't think of myself as an age. — Rene Russo

There is no wrong way to express and embody your most authentic self! — Meredith Russo

Life is a mirror. The face you put into it, is the one you will see — Bill Russo

He had to comfort himself with the firm conviction that most of what he objected to in Mohawk and the world at large was not the result of people reading the wrong books, but rather of not reading any at all. — Richard Russo

I was the one who did come through that door. You were the one she was waiting for. — Richard Russo

You have to stand up for what's right in life. Unless you do that ... you're nothing. — Aaron Russo

Being married, I would say most relationships are pretty codependent in some ways. — Rene Russo

Probably horse doo had a name in french also, but that didn't mean god intended for you to eat it. — Richard Russo

You've become a clever man. — Richard Russo

In June 1972, I went with friends to see the Rolling Stones at the Los Angeles Forum. After the concert, as we crossed through the parking lot, a guy in a brown Mercedes stopped in the middle of the street and got out. He came up to me and asked if I had ever modeled. — Rene Russo

- You get more misanthropic every day.
- I get older every day. My experience of human nature gets wider and deeper. — Richard Russo

Go to it. Be bold. Be true. Be kind. Rotate your tires. Don't drink so much. There aren't going to be enough liver transplants to go around. — Richard Russo

If she wanted to go back to Boston so damn bad, she should just do it. He said this knowing full well she wouldn't, for it was the particular curse of the Whiting men that their wives remained loyal to them out of spite. By — Richard Russo

I was a high-school dropout; I was a loner. — Rene Russo

My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination. — Richard Russo

Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece. — Richard Russo

No, Sully'd decided long ago to abstain from all but the most general forms of regret. He allowed himself the vague wish that things had turned out differently, without blaming himself that they hadn't, any more than he'd blamed himself when his 1-2-3 triple never ran like it should at least once. It didn't pay to second-guess every one of life's decisions, to pretend to wisdom about the past from the safety of the present, the way so many people did when they got older. — Richard Russo

But if you, as an independent filmmaker or a 'serious' filmmaker, think you put more love into your characters than the Russo Brothers do Captain America, or Joss Whedon does the Hulk, or I do a talking raccoon, you are simply mistaken. — James Gunn

I must be losing patience with my fellow humans," Miss Beryl went on. "Anymore I'm all for executing people who are mean to children. I used to favor just cutting off their feet. Now I want to rid the world of them completely. If this keeps up I'll be voting Republican soon. — Richard Russo

For as long as I could remember, I had been apologizing for existing, for trying to be who I was, to live the life I was meant to lead. — Meredith Russo

Many people can reach for and achieve excellence. To do this consistently is what separates masters and geniuses from everyone else. — Paul Russo

Though here his voice faltered, because he knew as well as she did what came next, what words came next. If he could speak them, he might even convince her they were true, as his father had convinced his mother that Browning summer. It was the worst lie there was, imprisoning and ultimately embittering the hearer, playing upon her terrible need to believe. He could feel the I love you forming on his lips. Would he have said it if she hadn't interrupted? — Richard Russo

The line of gray along the horizon is brighter now, and with the coming light I feel a certainty: that there is, despite our wild imaginings, only one life. The ghostly others, no matter how real they seem, no matter how badly we need them, are phantoms. The one life we're left with is sufficient to fill and refill our imperfect hearts with joy, and then to shatter them. And it never, ever lets up. — Richard Russo

Everybody looked at Sully suspiciously. A rumor that he had burned up in the blaze had been circulating, and people had quickly adjusted to the idea of profound human tragedy. They were reluctant to give it up, Sully could tell. He smiled apologetically at the crowd. — Richard Russo

People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake. — Richard Russo

I also think it's possible for us to be better people tomorrow than we are today." He had no idea, of course, whether any of these things were true, in whole or in part. Still, what possible good could come of believing otherwise? - — Richard Russo

If you asked me, denial was the best stage of grief. If prompted, the Wicked Queen's mirror would definitely say it was the fairest of them all. — Laurel Ulen Curtis

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. — Richard Russo

Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that. — Richard Russo