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
What does it feel like to be a parent? What does it feel like to be a child? And that's what stories do. They bring you there. They offer a dramatic explanation, which is always different from an expository explanation.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Stories help us understand the experiences of both parents and children, offering emotional insights beyond just facts.
In this quote, Richard Russo emphasizes the power of storytelling to bridge the emotional and experiential gap between parents and children. He suggests that through narratives, we can deeply engage with the feelings and perspectives of both roles, which are often complex and multifaceted, thus enhancing our understanding of familial relationships. The distinction he points out between dramatic and expository explanations highlights how stories can convey emotional truths that pure facts may not capture.
Themes
StoriesParentingChildrenEmotionsUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about parenting in my community, I might quote Russo to highlight the importance of storytelling in understanding family dynamics.
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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