"I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end, the comic’s best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he’s doing is easy is an occupational hazard. Cary Grant never won an Oscar, primarily, I suspect, because he made everything look so effortless. Why reward someone for having fun, for being charming? In "serious" fiction (as in "serious" film) you can feel the weight of the material. You expect to see the effort and the strain of all that heavy lifting, and we reward the effort as much as the success. Comedy is often just as serious, and to ignore that seriousness is misguided, of course, but most writers with comic world views have accustomed themselves to being sold at a discount. Most of us wouldn’t have it any other way."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Pulitzer Prize winnersNovelists from the United StatesPeople from New York (state)Short story writers from the United StatesScreenwriters from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Russo
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Richard Russo
9 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Richard Russo →
Related Quotes
"At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don’t really think of myself as "writing humor." I’m simply reporting on the…"
"When I went to Spain, right after the Pulitzer I encountered Spanish journalists who are very different from American…"
"Harold and I tried to plant new trees, but they won't take because of the roots. You got to dig up the old stumps and…"
"Truth be told, I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don…"
"Were it not for Occam's Razor, which always demands simplicity, I'd be tempted to believe that human beings are more …"
"One of the nice things about our marriage, at least to my way of thinking, is that my wife and I no longer have to ar…"
"The world is divided between kids who grow up wanting to be their parents and those like us, who grow up wanting to b…"
"That afternoon I came to understand that one of the deepest purposes of intellectual sophistication is to provide dis…"
"Would you end war? Create great Peace."
"To be a god First I must be a god-maker: We are what we create."