Josh Ritter > Quotes

“God can give or take away, Well who would make such an awful rule.”
― Josh Ritter

“Most of all: There's uncertainty in our lives. At night, you just have to go to sleep and have faith in the fairly large certainty that you'll wake up in the morning. Fear only has as much power as we give it space.”
― Josh Ritter

“It was the blue of the sky that caught him first: a rapturous, painfully pure spike of color that hooked his eyes like fish and reeled them upward into the heights.”
― Josh Ritter, Bright's Passage

“Mud and water and the stumps of trees. In every direction that was all there was. Bodies fell, but the trees died standing up.”
― Josh Ritter, Bright's Passage

“I started putting rocks on his grave because I just didn't want to lose it. Bodies molder in the ground. Everything falls: pine trees, snow, rain, might, Cordy. Memory is no different. Things you thought you'd never forget come loose from places you can't imagine they ever would. Beneath all of that, its easier than you might think to lose a grave in the woods.”
― Josh Ritter, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All

“At times throughout the night, they seemed to turn from real, living people into mere photographs of people, and then from photographs into memories, which are like photographs, and finally, as the ground blurred beneath them, whatever parts of them that could be seen from afar seemed to float like ghosts in the rippling air as they went about their work.”
― Josh Ritter, Bright's Passage

“I know how memory works. I know what happens to it. Some people pine for the past so bad that if you give them even a glimpse of an ear they'll grab hold of it and hang on, telling you stories about the past as if the present were drowning them. Believe me, I know how it happens. Memory comes in to fill the spaces of whatever isn't there.”
― Josh Ritter, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All

“The hardware man had measured out the nails, offered his condolences, and then asked Bright if he'd considered signing up to go to the war...With his mother dead, there was nothing really to stay for. Bright had signed his name, listened wordlessly to the instructions the man gave him, and then headed back to the cabin with an extra portion of nails for being the first to sign up in the book. It had been as easy as falling in a river.”
― Josh Ritter, Bright's Passage

“People who tell you they're disappointed in you are full of the worst kind of shit and you can always ignore them. The stuff they say only means that you're doing what you want to do, not what they want you to do. It's the people who really do care about you who will never tell you when you've hurt them.”
― Josh Ritter, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All

“It's the roaring that makes you hear the stillness in your head louder. I imagine that when I die it's gonna be like that. There's gonna come a big, white sound, like spring rapids or avalanche, and it's gonna sweep me up into it, but it ain't gonna carry me away, no. No, it's gonna make me a part of it. In that moment, when I'm dying for good, I'm gonna be that white water. I'm gonna be that avalanche. Yes, I will. I know how it's going to be. Those last few moments I'm alive, I'm gonna dive down deep into that roaring and I'm gonna swim through until I find the stillness at the raging heart of it.”
― Josh Ritter, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All

“But it ain't having a weak heart that lets you live as long as I have. It ain't even living that makes you live as long as me. All that shit about living a "full life" and all that. You can make love to all the women you want, make millions or dollars or eat out of a Campbell's soup can most of your life like I have. It doesn't matter for shit. What matters is outliving. Choose something, or someone, to outlive and there ain't a thing that can kill you.”
― Josh Ritter, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All

“The human heart can hold almost exactly one cup of hot tea. Did you know that? It holds roughly the same amount of milk, of course, and can accommodate sixty minnows if one has a mind to catch and pack them. (Linden Laughlin)”
― Josh Ritter, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All

“God doesn't build shit. Yeah, He creates stuff - the World, the mountain ranges, all that - but any fuck with one eye left in his head will tell you that He doesn't spend much time fixing up all His crap. No, He made it, splinters and snakes and all, but then He just took off, leaving the whole goddamn thing to whatever carrion birds feast on dilapidation.”
― Josh Ritter, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All