Quotes by Richard Ford

About Richard Ford:

Richard Ford is an American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land and Let Me Be Frank with You as well as the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Richard Ford

It was if we all sensed we'd be gone someday soon in a sudden instant--often it happened in the middle of the night--and didn't want to get involved. Or else it was that none of us wanted to know anybody later on who was the way we were now.

Richard Ford

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again.

Richard Ford

Some things can't be explained. They just are. And after a while they disappear, usually forever, or become interesting in another way. Literature's consolations are always temporary, while life is quick to begin again. It is better not even to look ...

Richard Ford

What was our life like? I almost don't remember now. Though I remember , the space of time it occupied. And I remember it fondly.

Richard Ford

Then, what's the matter?' I wonder, in fact, how many times I have said that or something equal to it to a woman passing palely through my life. Love is what this means, of course. Or at least, second best: surrender. Or at the least, take some time ...

Richard Ford

People surprise you, Frank, with just how fuckin stupid they are.

Richard Ford

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

Richard Ford

She understood perfectly that when the object of anticipation becomes paramount, trouble begins to lurk like a panther.

Richard Ford

It is no loss to mankind when one writer decides to call it a day. When a tree falls in the forest, who cares but the monkeys?

Richard Ford

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.

Richard Ford

Writing is the only thing I've ever done with persistence, except for being married.

Richard Ford

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

Richard Ford

Well, I believe in the idea of 'normal' in the way that I believe in the idea of logic. Or the idea of character. All of these ethical constructs are just that: constructs.

Richard Ford

Writing never came naturally and I still have to force my hand to do it.

Richard Ford

The ways in which things are superficially similar but also distinct is interesting to me.

Richard Ford

In order to write novels for a living - it's not pathological, but I do think and worry and brood and fidget about stuff that I'm working on.

Richard Ford

I had a Tourette's period. And obsessive compulsive disorder. Things would get in my brain that I couldn't get out of my brain.

Richard Ford

I have a theory... that someplace at the heart of most compelling stories is something that doesn't make sense.

Richard Ford

I haven't scoured Dixie out of my voice. But I don't think that the books that I have written... have really in any way been Southern in character.

Richard Ford

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

Richard Ford

Author Bio

  • NameRichard Ford
  • DescriptionAmerican novelist and short story writer
  • BornFebruary 16, 1944
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • AwardsPulitzer Prize For Fiction; ; PEN/Faulkner Award For Fiction; Guggenheim Fellowship