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

“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

“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

“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

“The real desk isn't one with four legs and a filing cabinet. It's the space of time that you stake out every day and the will with which you defend it.”

— Josh Ritter

“I do think that there's art that is tortured, but I prefer art that has the joy in it.”

— Josh Ritter

I'm singing for the love of it/Have mercy on the man who sings to be adored.

— Josh Ritter

“Every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied.”

— Josh Ritter

“I'm looking over rooftops, and I'm hoping it ain't true, that the same God looks out for them, looks out for me and you.”

— Josh Ritter

“Its been a long time coming but now the snow is gone”

— Josh Ritter

“Around mile 20 I was feeling so good, I wanted to kiss everyone.”

— Josh Ritter