Al Riske > Al's Quotes

“Any writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.”
― Nelson Algren

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
― E.L. Doctorow, Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews, 2nd Series

“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”
― robert heinlein

“The desert is full of things you can’t hold on to — light and heat and sand that slips through your fingers like friendships you once had.”
― Al Riske

“I cannot live without books.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
― Mark Twain

“I always write from my own experiences, whether I've had them or not.”
― Ron Carlson

“All good writing is like swimming underwater and holding your breath.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'"

(One On 1, interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1, March 25, 2007.)”
― David Halberstam, Everything They Had: Sports Writing

“You owe reality nothing and the truth about your feelings everything.”
― Richard Hugo

“As if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”
― James Bovard, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
― Niels Bohr

“If it takes you apart, that's not love. Love puts you back together.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde (Love In The Present Tense)

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
― Steve Martin

“They lived in the high desert, a sort of tumbleweed heaven, an imperfect paradise somewhere south of bliss.”
― Al Riske

“I didn’t have to see your face to know it had turned into ice. Ice that could easily crack and fall to pieces if you weren’t careful.”
― Al Riske

“Entwine your pulled-up roots with mine. We'll turn ourselves into a tumbleweed and ride the wind wherever it takes us.”
― Al Riske