Wit & Attitude Quote by Richard Russo

Pride rarely arrives this unguarded in a working novelist, and that’s what makes Russo’s line land. “I’m delighted” is a plainspoken admission, almost deliberately unliterary, as if he’s refusing the writerly posture of suspicion toward adaptations. The phrase gives you the subtext immediately: he expected less. Most authors learn to treat film versions of their books like weather - you can complain, but you can’t control it. Russo signals a different experience, one so unusual he has to name it: “rare.”

That final word does double duty. It’s a compliment to the movie, but it’s also a quiet critique of the system that usually chews up novels. “Rare movie” implies not merely “good,” but “good in a particular endangered way” - adult, character-driven, resistant to the smoothing pressures of market logic. Nobody’s Fool (1994) is exactly that: a mid-budget, star-led drama that trusts small-town texture, moral messiness, and the dignity of ordinary failure. In today’s franchise-saturated ecosystem, it reads like a species that’s gone missing.

Russo also frames the success as communal. He’s not touting his genius or claiming ownership; he’s relieved by the outcome. The intent is gracious, but the context is sharp: an author publicly acknowledging that cinema can, on occasion, translate literary interiority into performance, tone, and lived-in atmosphere without turning it into a plot machine. “Turned out” carries the humility of surprise, like the miracle wasn’t inevitable - it happened anyway.