At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.
Richard RussoRead
After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The world is a space where people pursue their deepest and often unattainable desires, defying reason and time.
In this quote, Richard Russo reflects on the human condition, suggesting that life is fundamentally about aspiring towards desires that may seem impossible or illogical. These desires, which are deeply rooted within us, persist regardless of the obstacles presented by reality or the inevitable passage of time, creating an eternal yearning akin to the permanence of polished marble.
Themes
YearningDesiresImpossibleLogicTime
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used during a motivational speech about following one's dreams despite challenges.
More from Richard Russo
All quotes →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 RussoRead
I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.
Richard RussoRead
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 RussoRead
I told him the truth, that I loved him and didn't regret anything about our lives together. But do we ever 'tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God' as my father used to say, to those we love? Or even to ourselves? Don't even the best and most fortunate of lives hint at other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too? Isn't this why we can't help feeling cheated, even when we know we haven't been?
Richard RussoRead
He'd discovered that his memories of that summer were like bad movie montages - young lovers tossing a Frisbee in the park, sharing a melting ice-cream cone, bicycling along the river, laughing, talking, kissing, a sappy score drowning out the dialogue because the screenwriter had no idea what these two people might say to each other.
Richard RussoRead
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