Quotes from Nobody's Fool

“I'm about to fuck up, he thought clearly, and his next thought was, but I don't have to. This was followed closely by a third thought, the last of this familiar sequence, which was, but I'm going to anyway.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“For fairness and loyalty, however important to the head, were issues that could seldom be squared in the human heart, at the deepest depths of which lay the mystery of affection, of love, which you either felt or you didn't, pure as instinct, which seized you, not the other way around, making a mockery of words like "should" and "ought". The human heart, where compromise could not be struck, not ever. Where transgressions exacted a terrible price. Where tangled black limbs fell. Where the boom got lowered.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“It was a scary thought. A man could be surrounded by poetry reading and not know it.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“An imperfect human heart, perfectly shattered, was her conclusion. A condition so common as to be virtually universal, rendering issues of right and wrong almost incidental.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“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, quote from Nobody's Fool

“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, quote from Nobody's Fool

“We wear the chains we forge in life,”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“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, quote from Nobody's Fool

“Throughout his life a case study underachiever, Sully—people still remarked—was nobody’s fool, a phrase that Sully no doubt appreciated without ever sensing its literal application—that at sixty, he was divorced from his own wife, carrying on halfheartedly with another man’s, estranged from his son, devoid of self-knowledge, badly crippled and virtually unemployable—all of which he stubbornly confused with independence.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“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, quote from Nobody's Fool

“Since her retirement from teaching Miss Beryl's health had in many respects greatly improved, despite her advancing years. An eighth-grade classroom was an excellent place to snag whatever was in the air in the way of illness. Also depression, which, Miss Beryl believed, in conjunction with guilt, opened the door to illness. Miss Beryl didn't know any teachers who weren't habitually guilty and depressed--guilty they hadn't accomplished more with their students, depressed that very little more was possible.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“Perfect silence. This in response to Sully's key being turned in the ignition of the pickup.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“Hell, at twenty, he’d been ready to junk everything and start over too. But now, at sixty, he was less willing to throw things away that could be patched together and kept running for a few more months. He wanted to keep going forward, not stop and turn around and analyze the validity of decisions made and courses charted long ago.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“probably horse doo had a name in french also, but that didn't mean god intended for you to eat it.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“One of the unfortunate side effects of teaching for forty years was that the task was so monumental, even in recollection, that it sometimes seemed you’d tried to teach everyone on the planet. What Miss Beryl looked for in each adult face was the evidence of some failed lesson in some distant yesterday that might predict incompetence today.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“The nurse who came in to take her blood was the same one who’d taken her blood pressure earlier, and she slapped the flesh on Miss Beryl’s arm with some annoyance, as if she’d have preferred it to assume some other shape. Miss Beryl knew just how the woman felt.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“Also her perfume, which mingled with the crisp air off the lake below, creating an intoxicating mixture of damp earth and leaves and water and girl. Not woman, in Sully’s opinion. Girl.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“Maybe sheetrocking wasn't one of Sully's favorite jobs, but like most physical labor, there was a rhythm to it that you could find if you cared to look, and once you found this rhythm it'd get you through a morning. Rhythm was what Sully had counted on over the long years - that and the wisdom to understand that no job, no matter how thankless or stupid or backbreaking, could not be gotten through. The clock moved if you let it.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“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. As if, given a second chance to live their lives, they'd be smarter. Sully didn't know too many people who got noticeably smarter over the course of a lifetime. Some made fewer mistakes, but in Sully's opinion that was because they couldn't go quite so fast. They had less energy, no more virtue; fewer opportunities to screw up, not more wisdom. It was Sully's policy to stick by his mistakes....”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“You want a poke in the eye with a sharp stick?” Sully offered. “You don’t have a stick,” Will pointed out.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“The best she was able to do was to reflect that people invariably exhibited the very worst side of their flawed natures when invited to put their thoughts into writing, especially when the invitation was sanctioned hit-and-run posing as democracy in action. Here”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“I know,” Peter said, zipping Will’s jacket. The little boy, who had apparently had his throat zipped into his zipper at some point, always put his mittened hand beneath his chin to prevent it from happening again. Sully”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“Like many men addicted to sports, Clive Sr. was also a religious man and one who’d been raised to accept life’s mysteries—the Blessed Trinity, for one instance, a woman’s reasoning, for another.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

“They turned down the narrow alley that led to the Woohvorth’s”
― Richard Russo, quote from Nobody's Fool

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