Empire Falls Quotes

“And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don't take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“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. ”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“Not giving a shit, she decided, is like the defrost option on a car's heater that miraculously unfogs the windshield, allowing you to see where you're headed.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“The other possibility was that there was no right thing to say, that the choice wasn't between right and wrong but between wrong, more wrong, and as wrong as you can get.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“My God, he couldn't help thinking, how terrible it is to be that age, to have emotions so near the surface that the slightest turbulence causes them to boil over. That, very simply, was what adulthood must be all about -- acquiring the skill to bury things more deeply. Out of sight and, whenever possible, out of mind.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“Just because things happen slow doesn't mean you'll be ready for them. If they happened fast, you'd be alert for all kinds of suddenness, aware that speed was trump. "Slow" works in an altogether different principle, on the deceptive impression that there's plenty of time to prepare, which conceals the central fact, that no matter how slow things go, you'll always be slower.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving,”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“To his surprise, she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, a kiss so full of affection that it dispelled the awkwardness, even as it caused Miles' heart to plummet, because all kisses are calibrated, and this one revealed the great chasm between affection and love.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“It pleased him to imagine God as someone like his mother, someone beleagured by too many responsibilities, too dog-tired to monitor an energetic boy every minute of the day, but who, out of love and fear for his safety, checked in on him whenever she could. Was this so crazy? ...Miles liked the idea of a God who, when He at last had the oppotunity to return His attention to His children, might shake His head with wonder and mutter, "Jesus. Look what they're up to now." A distractible God, perhaps, one who'd be startled to discover so many of His children way up in trees since the last time He looked. A God whose hand would go rushing to His mouth in fear in that instant of recognition that - good God! - that kid's going to hurt himself. A God who could be surprised by unanticipated pride - glory be, that boy is a climber!”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“The sad, fucking truth was that no matter who you are, you never, ever, get your fill.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“One of the odd things about middle age...was the strange decisions a man discovers he’s made by not really making them.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“To his surprise he...discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something…that you cared about a great deal.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“He’d meant to forgive his brother, maybe even imagined he had. He’d also meant to learn to trust him, but instead merely fell into the habit of waiting for him to fuck up again.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“Lives are rivers. We imagine we can direct their paths, though in the end there’s but one destination, and we end up being true to ourselves only because we have no choice.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“You can't possibly judge your ability to control something until you've experienced the extremes of its capabilities. Do you understand?”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“...aware, as always, that the truth isn't much of substitute for a good answer.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“if making things seem prettier than they are is a lie, then making them seem uglier must be another.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“Bullshitting god would be Max's plan in a nutshell. Miles could even guess his father's opening gambit. He'd point out to God that if He expected better results, He ought to have given Max better character to work with, instead of sending him into battle so poorly equipped.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“Tick's strategy for dealing with lying adults is to say nothing and watch thee lies swell and constrict in their throats. when this happens, the lie takes on a physical life of its own and must be either expelled or swallowed. Most adults prefer to expel untruths with little burplike coughs behind their hands, while others chuckle or snort or make barking sounds. When Mr. Meyer's Adam's apple bobs once, Tick sees that he's a swallower, and that this particular lie has gone south down his esophagus and into his stomach. According to her father, the man suffers from bleeding ulcers. Tick can see why. She imagines all the lies a man in his position would have to tell, how they must just churn away down there in his intestines like chunks of indigestible food awaiting elimination. By the Tick suspects, lies seek open air. they don't like being confined in dark, cramped places.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“The problem with the contemplative life was that there was no end to contemplation, no fixed time limit after which thought had to be transformed into action. Contemplation was like sitting on a committee that seldom made recommendations and was ignored when it did, a committee that lacked even the authority to disband.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“The cutthroat savagery of high school romance inspired in nearly all adults a collective amnesia. Having survived it themselves, they locked those memories far away in some dark chamber of their subconscious where things that are too terrible to contemplate are permanently stored.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“In this instance, she understood completely what the endorsement of a fool was worth.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“If you paid me for work," continued Max, whose rhetoric was more sophisticated than you might expect from a man with food in his beard, "I wouldn't have to feel worthless. There's not law says old people have to feel worthless all the while, you know. You paid me, I'd have some dignity."

Now it was Mile's turn to nod and smile agreeably. "I think the dignity ship set sail a long time ago, Dad.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“But of course everything had conspired to spoil her entrance, which only went to prove what Janine already knew: that no matter how well you planned something, God always planned better. If He was feeling stingy that day and didn't want you to have some little thing you had your heart set on, then you weren't going to get it and that was all there was to it.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“So what? Few men, Miles reflected, lived so comfortably within the confines of a two.word personal philosophy.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“For Miles, one of the great mysteries of marriage was that you had to actually say things before you realized they were wrong. Because he'd been saying the wrong thing to Janine for so many years, he'd grown wary, testing most of his observations in the arena of his imagination before saying them out loud, but even then he was often wrong. Of course, the other possibility was that there was no right thing to say, that the choice wasn't between right and wrong but between wrong, more wrong, and as wrong as you can get. Wrong, all of it, to one degree or another, by definition, or by virtue of the fact that Miles himself was the one saying it.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“She gave him a smile in which hope and knowledge were going at it, bare-knuckled, equally and eternally matched.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“Most Americans want it to be 1959, with the addition of cappuccino and cable TV.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“Interesting, Miles thought. Like himself, Father Mark, as a child, had been reassured by the imagined proximity of God, whereas adults, perhaps because they so often were up to no good, took more comfort from His remoteness.”
― Richard Russo, Empire Falls