Richard Price Quotes

The County Jail looked like a tall, forbidding elementary school. Seven stories of dirty brown brick, one hundred years old and now operating at 330 percent of capacity.

I'd love to be a saxophonist. I don't know why, but I pretend I'm the saxophonist when I listen to music. I have about as much chance playing the sax as I do learning how to fly.

If you're writing a book that takes place in New York in the moment, you can't not write about 9-11; you can't not integrate it. My main character's view is the Statue of Liberty and the Trade Center. It doesn't have to take over, but it has to be acknowledged.

And what is the religion of many persons but a kind of demonism that delights in human sacrifices and causes them to look with horror on the greatest part of mankind? Plutarch, it is well known, has observed very justly that it is better not to believe in a god than to believe him to be a capricious and malevolent being.

You saw him, said hello, how's tricks . . .

Out here?" he said quietly. "What?" The kid looked stricken. "Have I not treated you like a man out

The only place a man can be truly handicapped is in his mind, and that a man who can conquer his own mind has got the world at his feet.

Rocco drove up the West Side until they reached the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

There's some people in this room right now," Pavlicek said, "who gave twenty years or more to the Job, myself included. We've seen it all, handled it all, and when a young person dies we've all walked up the stairs, knocked on the doors, and delivered the news, between us, to an army of parents. We've caught them on their way to the floor, carried them into the bedroom or living room, then gone into their kitchens and brought them water - over the years, an ocean of water, glass by glass by glass. And so, after all that, we think we understand what it must feel like to be one of those parents, but we don't. We can't. I still can't. But I'm getting there.

Saturday was a sweet and sunny day, the kind that made people think about getting it together once and for all
health, kids, jobs, personal appearance, doing things right this time.

You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.

In the beginning, there wasn't a physical position or a sexual fancy off limits, but as they grew more comfortable with each other, it always seemed like straight-up missionary, after a little of this and a little of that, unfailingly ended with both of them afterward euphorically raiding the refrigerator in search of the next fun thing to do.

About Annette from?" He stood up, ditched his cigarette. "What's the difference?" "I wanna know, Chubby. Who the hell is goin' aroun' reportin' my business to the papers?" Chubby shrugged. "I ran into your friend Bobby." "Butler?" Stony stamped around the room. Chubby hooked his arm. "Hey, don't get your balls in a uproar, it just

I can never read this book, just like I can never see a movie that I wrote a screenplay for. I can read it and see it physically, but I can't accurately judge it. I'm too close to it. If I read it ten times I'll have ten different reactions.

Is he comin' here?

Being nice, setting him up. The glow in his belly got redder, but he also felt a new pain, a stabbing sensation, as if someone was in

I write because I write - as anyone in the arts does. You're a painter because you feel you have no choice but to paint. You're a writer because this is what you do.

I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.

As he reached for his Visa card, the security monitor next to the register caught Billy in all his glory: football burly but slump-shouldered, his pale face with its exhaustion-starred eyes topped with half a pitchfork's worth of prematurely graying hair. He was only forty-two, but that crushed-cellophane gaze of his combined with a world-class insomniac's posture had once gotten him into a movie at a senior citizen's discount.

Stipulation that she be sent home to her

As a reminder to himself that at forty-three you don't make plans to dabble in different lives. At forty-three, what you are, what you know, is about as far as you're going to go in this life;

As the industry has matured, real estate has become a very accepted investment. Institutions have used core investments to get comfortable with real estate as an asset class, and now that they're comfortable they're moving up the risk spectrum.

The sky continued to almost imperceptibly lighten, the birds coming on in earnest now, dozens of them barreling low from tree to tree over the crime scene as if they were stringing beads.

On the roof of the Accord again, then bent down, pressed his face against the driver's

While before deciding to make the rounds of

tremble. "Anyway, he starts following

Splattered all over the wall, come right up off his feet like a pulled puppet just

falafel joint, jazz joint, gyro joint, corner. Schoolyard, creperie, realtor, corner. Tenement, tenement, tenement museum, corner. Pink Pony, Blind Tiger, muffin boutique, corner. Sex shop, tea shop, synagogue, corner. Bollywood, Buddha, botanica, corner. Leather outlet, leather outlet, leather outlet, corner. Bar, school, bar, school. People's Park, corner. Tyson mural, Celia Cruz mural, Ladi Di mural, corner. Bling shop, barbershop, car service corner.

The kind of event on a conveyor belt that causes a fire occurs in a variety of industrial environments, not uniquely in coal environments.

But then something happened, Ray, something amazing. Something...

"That white cop sitting next to me? He took a long look at my mother when she came in, just like, absorbed her, and then without even turning to me, he just put his hand on my back, up between my neck and shoulder...

"And all he did was squeeze. Give me a little squeeze of sympathy, then rubbed that same spot with his palm for maybe two, three seconds, and that was it.

"But I swear to you, nobody, in my entire life up to that point had ever touched me with that kind of tenderness. I had never experienced a sympathetic hand like that, and Ray, it felt like lightning.

"I mean, the guy did it without thinking, I'm sure. And when dinnertime rolled around he had probably forgotten all about it. Forgot about me, too, for that matter... But I didn't forget.

"I didn't walk around thinking about it nonstop either, but something like seven years later when I was at community college? The recruiting officer for the PD came on campus for Career Day, and I didn't really like college all that much to begin with, so I took the test for the academy, scored high, quit school and never looked back.

"And usually when I tell people why I became a cop I say because it would keep Butchie and Antoine out of my life, and there's some truth in that.

"But I think the real reason was because that recruiting officer on campus that day reminded me, in some way, yo

On the nights they went to bed at the same time, Rocco would lie there and watch her go to the closet, watch her choose either silky slips or mannish shirts, like running up sex flags from across the room.

Strike said "Huh" again, thinking about betrayal, about how everything and everybody were just so much smoke.

Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day.

In the beginning - not now, thank God - Patty was always sharing the important books of her life with him, like Black Elk Speaks, The Golden Bough, and Hero with a Thousand Faces.

The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance.

Everybody was full of shit in this game. The cops bullshitted each other, the dealers bullshitted each other, the cops bullshitted the dealers, the dealers bullshitted the cops, the cops took bribes, the dealers ratted each other out. Nobody knew for sure which side anybody was on; no one really knew how much or how little money anybody else was making. Everything was smoke.

The more I hung out with detective squads, the more there was always one guy or two guys or a woman who had a case that they were the primary on years ago, it was never solved, and they take that case into their retirements.

Boxes on the shelves. "He's seein' this chick, Annette, Annette Palladino." Chubby's eyes fluttered at half-mast as if someone had just shoved smelling salts under his nose. He looked down at his shoes and shook his head. "Hey, you know her?" Butler turned from the shelves. Chubby nodded without looking up. "She gives the best underage blowjob this side a Harlem.

Beat him, eat him and get out.

Some day, my son, you are going to learn that the two greatest joys of being a man are beating the hell out of someone and getting the hell beaten out of you, good night.

Worked with his father and uncle. He

Because, man, if this city ain't Caleb's mountain, I don't know what is, and those giants out there are just stomping people into the ground.

Although the clientele were primarily the Eloi of the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, an incident a month earlier had involved a platinumed-out crew of Bronx Morlocks:

He restrained himself from another wisecrack, infinitesimally but with great effort attempting to close down his nightclub approach to education; every positive change in his life, every minute increment in character, acquired more or less through shame.

feel you're asking him incriminating

I write because I can't imagine not writing.

Whatever. Nothin', nothin' at all. I'm sittin' there thirty minutes just waitin'.

Indians, man, they were so tough they useta eat steak with a spoon." "I hate steak," said Tyrone.

I think the definition of an artist is not necessarily tied into excellence or talent; an artist is somebody who, if you took away their freedom to make art, would lose their mind.

Year they even sacrificed a great buffalo whose burned bones spelled 'murder,' but the tapping

It was time to chuck this life, with its Jo-Jos and Rodneys, its bloody burning children and walking-dead parents, just kick dirt over the whole show, like a cat burying its shit.

His voice was languidly dense, as if he was a little slow on the uptake, but Strike knew that tone came from the man's feeling of complete control.

Yeah, uh-huh." "OK. Were you coming from a store or something when you saw him?" "Naw, I was like, coming from the benches." "And where was he?

Later that night it took him most of a bottle of Chartreuse to work up the resolve to quit drinking.