“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, quote from Straight Man
“Truth be told, I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted. And, of course, my idea of entertaining might not be yours. I'm in complete agreement with all those people who say, regarding movies, 'I just want to be entertained.' This populist position is much derided by my academic colleagues as simpleminded and unsophisticated, evidence of questionable analytical and critical acuity. But I agree with the premise, and I too just want to be entertained. That I am almost never entertained by what entertains other people who just want to be entertained doesn't make us philosophically incompatible. It just means that we shouldn't go to movies together.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“As I drift back into sleep, I can't help thinking that it's a wonderful thing to be right about the world. To weigh the evidence, always incomplete, and correctly intuit the whole, to see the world in a grain of sand, to recognize its beauty, its simplicity, its truth. It's as close as we get to God in this life, and reside in the glow of such brief flashes of understanding, fully awake, sometimes for two or three seconds, at peace with our existence. And then back to sleep we go.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“To expect reason is where the fallacy lies.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“He looks like he could be taken in a fight. Not by me, but by somebody. Not anyone in Humanities, probably.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“The world is divided between kids who grow up wanting to be their parents and those like us, who grow up wanting to be anything but. Neither group ever succeeds.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“Who but an English professor would threaten to kill a duck a day and hold up a goose as an example?”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“That afternoon I came to understand that one of the deepest purposes of intellectual sophistication is to provide distance between us and our most disturbing personal truths and gnawing fears.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“It's possible to overlook character flaws of in-laws for the simple reason that you feel neither responsible for them nor genetically implicated.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“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, quote from Straight Man
“That man truly loathes you," Herbert says when he's sure Rourke isn't coming back.
"I don't think so," I smile. "I just give his life focus, that's all.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“I hear you don't write any more," he says...
"Not true," I inform him. "You should see the margins of my student papers."
"Not the same as writing a book though, right?"
"Almost identical," I assure him. "Both go largely unread.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“The task he has chosen for himself, of wooing my mother with a bright red pickup truck, a Patsy Cline tape, and a string of malapropisms, is ample justification to me for not taking the world too seriously, its relentless heartbreak notwithstanding.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“His carefully calculated sincerity is almost entirely indistinguishable from the real thing.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“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, quote from Straight Man
“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, quote from Straight Man
“They're around back," she calls down when Julie and I get out. "Planning their strategy." "Good for them," I say, confident that no strategy that isn't grounded in chaos theory is likely to work against a man like me.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“[My] explanation makes such immediate sense that I can give it up only reluctantly, a necessary concession to my physician's expertise. This is the way my students feel, I realize, when I suggest stylistic revisions. They like the sentence the way they wrote it. They defer to my greater knowledge and experience because they must, but they still like the way the original sentence sounded when it had a dangling modifier, and they secretly suspect that my judgment, while generally sound, may be flawed in this instance. And they're a little miffed at my insistence...”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“My mother has always been the sort of woman whose emotional state can be intuited from the volume at which she rattles kitchen utensils.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“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, and by then whatever we've done has already begun to sever itself from clear significance, at least for the doer.
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're not the kind of man who.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“- You get more misanthropic every day.
- I get older every day. My experience of human nature gets wider and deeper.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“Worse, I have to admit to feeling the jealousy of one crab for another that has managed to climb out of the barrel.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“My afternoon comp class is not persuaded. In fact, they feel ill-treated...I've read three short essays aloud, anonymously, for the purpose of inspiring discussion or, failing discussion, private misgiving. It's my hope that if the majority of these intellectually addled young folk actually hear their words aloud, if they are forced to digest not only their advice to me but the logic that led to this advice, they will, if not change their minds, at least become acquainted with doubt.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“... Mr. Purty has cheered me up. The task he has chosen for himself, of wooing my mother with a bright red pickup truck, a Patsy Cline tape, and a string of malapropisms, is ample justification to me for not taking the world too seriously, its relentless heartbreak notwithstanding… (Richard Russo, Straight Man)”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“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, quote from Straight Man
“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, quote from Straight Man
“I put myself up for full professor, an act of such unprecedented and unmitigated arrogance that the committee approved it, thus effectively rooting me to the scene of the crime, too weighed down by tenure, rank, and salary to be marketable ever again.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“...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, quote from Straight Man
Richard Russo
Born place: in Johnstown, New York, The United States
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“A person's birthday should be a special day, a wonderful day, a day of pure celebration for the luck of being born! ”
― Elise Broach, quote from Masterpiece
“Library books were, I suddenly realized, promiscuous, ready to lie down in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, quote from The Giant's House
“True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally complete the incomplete.”
― Kakuzō Okakura, quote from The Book of Tea
“Sometimes I fly like an eagle but with the wings of a wren”
― Anne Sexton, quote from The Complete Poems
“İdam sehpasının birkaç metre ötesinden, Saint-Jean-Decolle tarikatından dört keşiş, siyah kukuletaları, kaba kumaştan giysileri içinde, idam mahkûmlarına işkence yapılmasından sorumlu bu dört din adamı, mahkûmlar kilisesinden, Beatrice'in babasının ikinci eşini -baba katlinde suç ortağı ve ensest olayının tanığı olan kişiyi çıkarıyorlardı.
İlk o ölecekti. Kadın ayakta duramıyordu; onu baltaya götürecek olan güvenlik görevlilerinin oluşturduğu çitin arasında bitkindi. İki keşiş onu koltuk altlarından tutuyordu. Ötekisi de ölüme layıkıyla gitmesini salık veren sözler söylüyordu kulağına. Sonuncusu ise, onun yüzü hizasında bir ayna tutar gibi, idam sehpasını görmesini engelleyen, boyalı bir tahta levha tutuyordu. Bu tahta üzerinde Vaftizci Yahya'nın (Saint-Jean-Baptise) gümüş tepsi içindeki kesik başının tasviri vardı. Acıdan tükenmiş haldeydi, elinde baltasıyla onu bekleyen celladı görünce, mahkûm kadın bayıldı. Sehpaya çıkardıkları, bilinci yerinde olmayan zavallı bir kadındı. Onu kesme kütüğüne yatırdılar. Görülecek ne var gerisinde? Gerisi kasaplık. Asıl dram sonrasındaydı. Kiliseden tek başına, hızla ilerleyen, Beatrice'in silueti çıktı. Bütün kent haykırdı. Acıma, hayranlık, öfke; bütün Roma, hapishanelerinden saraylarına dek aynı heyecanla sarsılmış gibiydi.
İdam sehpasının altındaki ressam grubu hariç; onlar, ses çıkarmadan oldukları yerde kaldılar. Ellerinde kâğıt kalemleri, en küçük bir ayrıntıyı kaçırmamak kaygısı içindeydiler. İnsanlar; üç dört hatta beş kadar idama alışık olsalar da, kutlamalar öncesi bir dönemde, böylesi güzel ve soylu bir kadının idam edilmesi sık rastlanan bir durum değildi.
Bu neredeyse bir çocuktu, yapılan işkencelere dokuz saat boyunca dayandığı söyleniyordu ve oradaki herkes onu masum buluyordu. Roma halkı, kalabalığın içinden dimdik, kendinden emin, Tanrıya dualar ederek Papaya hakaretler okuyarak ilerleyen bu genç kızın gösterdiği yüreklilikte, Reform karşıtlarının, Katolikler anısına Hıristiyan sanatçılara sipariş ettikleri, Sainte Catherine, Sainte Ursula ve Sainte Cecile gibi azizeleri görmekteydi.
Hemen sonrasında bir sessizlik oldu. Genç kız kafasını kesme kütüğüne koydu. Celladın kollarını havaya kaldırdığı görüldü. Baltanın gün ışığında yalkın verdiği görüldü. Yalnızca bunlar görüldü: güneş, balta ve Saint-Pierre Kilisesi'nin kubbesi. Kollar tekrar aşağı indi. Boğuk bir çarpma sesi duyulur gibi oldu. Halk haykırdı. Baba despotluğunun ve papa haksızlığının kurbanı bir genç kızın kafasını gördüklerinde, korku, acıma, öfke ve kin dolu bir çığlık yükseldi.
Gösteriyi yakından izlemeyi başarmış olan ressamlar arasında soğukkanlılığını koruyabilen iki kişi vardı. Bir baba ve kızı. Orazio Gentileschi ve küçük Artemisia.”
― Alexandra Lapierre, quote from Artemisia
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Bitter BloodBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
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