Quotes by Richard Ford

Humans generally get out the gist of what they need to say right at the beginning, then spend forever qualifying, contradicting, burnishing or taking important things back. Yor rareley miss anything by cutting most people off after two sentences.

Meeting a girl, falling in love, marrying her, moving to Connecticut, buying a fucking house, starting a life with her and thinking you really knew anything about her--the last part was a complete fiction, which made all the rest a joke.

They may already know too much about their mother and father--nothing being more factual than divorce, where so much has to be explained and worked through intelligently (though they have tried to stay equable). Ive noticed this is often the time when children begin calling their parents by their first names, becoming little ironists after their parents faults. What could be lonelier for a parent than to be criticized by his child on a first-name basis?

Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency—a chaos—, an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end life as we know it but for the fact that this very story is written, this order found, this style determined, the worst averted, and we are beneficiaries of that order by being readers.

Its odd to imagine, of course: you pass a car on a lonely rural highway; you sit beside a man in a diner and share views with him; you wait behind a customer checking into a motel, a friendly man with a winning smile and twinkling hazel eyes, whos happy to fill you in on his lifes story and wants you to like him - odd to think this man is cruising around with a loaded pistol, making up his mind about which bank hell soon rob. - Richard Ford, Canada

Someone ... tell us whats important, because we no longer know.

With imagination, you can put something where nothing was.

My parents...were people running from the past, who didnt look back at much if they could help it, and whose whole life always lay somewhere in the offing.

Some things cant be explained. They just are. And after a while they disappear, usually forever, or become interesting in another way. Literatures consolations are always temporary, while life is quick to begin again. It is better not even to look so hard, to leave off explaining. Nothing makes me more queasy than to spend time with people who dont know that and who cant forget, and for whom such knowledge isnt a cornerstone of life.

It was if we all sensed wed be gone someday soon in a sudden instant--often it happened in the middle of the night--and didnt 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.

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.

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

Loneliness, Ive read, is like being in a long line, waiting to reach the front where its promised something good will happen. Only the line never moves, and other people are always coming in ahead of you, and the front, the place where you want to be, is always farther and farther away until you no longer believe it has anything to offer you.

We are past the end of things now, but I dont want to leave.

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

She ordered a martini and encouraged me to, but said she couldnt 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.

If loneliness is the disease, the story is the cure.

One of the down-side factors to living alone is that you sometimes get overly absorbed with how exact segments of time are consumed, and can begin to feel a pleasure with life that is hopelessly tinged with longing.

Im intrigued by how ordinary behavior exists so close beside its opposite.

It was as if theyd discovered something that had once been there but had gotten hidden or misunderstood or forgotten over time, and they were charmed by it once more, and by one another. Which seems only right and expectable for married people. They caught a glimpse of the person they fell in love with, and who sustained life. For some, that vision must never dim - as is true of me. But it was odd that our parents should catch their glimpse, and have frustration, anxiety and worry pass away like clouds dispersing after a storm, refind their best selves, but for that glimpse to happen just before landing our family in ruin.