Richard Ford Art Quotations

When you are sixteen you do not know what your parents know, or much of what they understand, and less of what's in their hearts. This can save you from becoming an adult too early, save your life from becoming only theirs lived over again--which is a loss. But to shield yourself--as I didn't do--seems to be an even greater error, since what's lost is the truth of your parents' life and what you should think about it, and beyond that, how you should estimate the world you are about to live in.

Construed as turf, home just seems a provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes on you. A certain set of buildings, a glimpsed, smudged window-view across a schoolyard, a musty aroma sniffed behind a garage when you were a child, all of which come crowding in upon your latter-day senses -- those are pungent things and vivid, even consoling. But to me they are also inert and nostalgic and unlikely to connect you to the real, to that essence art can sometimes achieve, which is permanence.

At heart, of course, a story itself is consolation's instrument.

She was an artist. She held opposites in her mind.

Cynicism makes you feel smart, I know it, even when you aren't smart.

The art of living your life has a lot to do with getting over loss. The less the past haunts you, the better.

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

Find what causes a commotion in your heart. Find a way to write about that

Many years ago, when I was just an independent driver sleeping under the truck, man, when you got to stay in a Holiday Inn, that was a treat. I've cleaned quite a few parts in the bathtub of a Holiday Inn in my time. In the late '60s, we'd go on a three-month tour. You'd have to build your cars in the parking lot. If you had an engine problem or had to build a gear, you'd take it in the room, wash it in hot water and put it back together.