Rick Bragg Quotes

• Every life deserves a certain amount of dignity, no matter how poor or damaged the shell that carries it.

  Rick Bragg

  Inspirational, Life, Shells

  Rick Bragg (2010). “All Over but the Shoutin'”, p.21, Vintage

  67 Copy quote

• This is a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven.

  Rick Bragg

  Baby, Stars, Grandma

  FaceBook post by Rick Bragg from May 17, 2013

  62 Copy quote

• But I hope I will never have a life that is not surrounded by books, by books that are bound in paper and cloth and glue, such perishable things for ideas have lasted thousands of years . . . I hope I am always walled in by the very weight and breadth and clumsy, inefficient, antiquated bulk of them, hope that I spend my last days on this Earth arranging and rearranging them on thrones of good, honest pine, oak, and mahogany, because I just like to look at their covers, and dream of the promise of the great stories inside.

  Rick Bragg

  Dream, Book, Years

  44 Copy quote

• Don’t worry about what people think, because once it’s all over the people who love you will make you what they want you to be, and the people who don’t love you will, too.

  Rick Bragg

  Love You, Thinking, People

  Rick Bragg (2008). “The Prince of Frogtown”, p.237, Vintage

  31 Copy quote

• It was a good moment, the kind you would like to press between the pages of a book, or hide in your sock drawer, so you could touch it again.

  Rick Bragg

  Book, Pages, Kind

  Rick Bragg (2010). “All Over but the Shoutin'”, p.292, Vintage

  34 Copy quote

• The only thing poverty does is grind down your nerve endings to a point that you can work harder and stoop lower than most people are willing to. It chips away a person's dreams to the point that the hopelessness shows through, and the dreamer accepts that hard work and borrowed houses are all this life will ever be.

  Rick Bragg

  Dream, Hard Work, People

  Rick Bragg (2010). “All Over but the Shoutin'”, p.25, Vintage

  27 Copy quote

• I believe that if we are going to write about life and death, we should not do it from the cheap seats.

  Rick Bragg

  Believe, Writing, Life And Death

  Rick Bragg (2010). “All Over but the Shoutin'”, p.20, Vintage

  30 Copy quote

• Momma kept a garden, which sounds romantic to people who have never held a hoe

  Rick Bragg

  Garden, People, Hoe

  Rick Bragg (2010). “All Over but the Shoutin'”, p.46, Vintage

  31 Copy quote

• It is a common condition of being poor...you are always afraid that the good things in your life are temporary, that someone can take them away, because you have no power beyond your own brute strength to stop them.

  Rick Bragg

  Success, Common, Poor

  FaceBook post by Rick Bragg from May 29, 2011

  30 Copy quote

• I began reading Harper Lee's novel in the skimpy shade of a pine outside my grandmother's house, fat beagles pressing against me, begging for attention, ignored. At dark, I kept reading, first on the couch, a bologna sandwich in one hand, then in my bed, by the light of a 60-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling on an orange drop cord. When my mother came in from her job as a maid and unplugged my chandelier, I replayed the story in my head until it was crowded out by dreams. I woke the next morning, smelling biscuits, and reached for the book again.

  Rick Bragg

  Mother, Dream, Morning

  23 Copy quote

• Passion is something you really don't miss, after it has cooled. It is like looking at an empty bottle on the side of the road and thinking, "Boy, I wish I had a Coke." The loves you miss are the ones that go away when they are still warm, even hot, to the touch.

  Rick Bragg

  Love You, Passion, Boys

  Rick Bragg (2010). “All Over but the Shoutin'”, p.216, Vintage

  21 Copy quote

• I made some friends for life, the way I usually make them. Any jackass can be pleasant company, but if people help you when you're at your worst, that's a friend.

  Rick Bragg

  People, Way, Helping

  17 Copy quote

• This is home and home is not something you remember, it is something you see every day and every moment.

  Rick Bragg

  Home, Remember, Moments

  18 Copy quote

• It wasn't that I had gotten it right . . . but that I had gotten true.

  Rick Bragg

  4 Copy quote

• You do not hate the time you waste; it evokes a much more passive emotion than that. You only wish you had it back, like a quarter in an unlucky slot machine.

  Rick Bragg

  Hate, Wish, Machines

  FaceBook post by Rick Bragg from Aug 10, 2010

  13 Copy quote

• It is easy to be liked when the world has no jagged edges, when life is electric blankets and peach ice cream. But to be beloved, a man needs a dragon.

  Rick Bragg

  Men, Ice Cream, Dragons

  FaceBook post by Rick Bragg from Sep 20, 2016

  11 Copy quote

• Like most men, Jimmy Jim was neither all good nor all bad. It is just that when he was bad, gentler people saw in him a disturbing fury. People, a lot them, don't understand fury. They understand anger and even hatred, but fury is one of those old words that have gone out of style. Jimmy Jim Bundrum understood it. It rode his shoulder like a parrot.

  Rick Bragg

  Men, People, Hatred

  Rick Bragg (2010). “Ava's Man”, p.35, Vintage

  14 Copy quote

• These were people... who built redwood decks on their mobile homes and have no idea that smart-aleck Yankees think that is somehow funny. People of the pines. My people.

  Rick Bragg

  Smart, Home, Thinking

  Rick Bragg (2010). “All Over but the Shoutin'”, p.15, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

• When you're a sportswriter, you learn how to use your imagination and to flex your literary muscle, because it's the same game played over and over again. There's nothing unique or marvelous. It's not an earthquake, or a weird mass murder. It's just the same old game played over and over, and you have to bring out the personalities. You have to drag them kicking and screaming out into the light of day, or you're not a good sportswriter.

  Rick Bragg

  Unique, Light, Games

  14 Copy quote

• There are these boutique writers out there who think if they are not writing their novels sitting at a bistro with their laptops, then they're not real writers. That's ridiculous.

  Rick Bragg

  Real, Writing, Thinking

  8 Copy quote

• And Sandy Martindale ... dated Elvis before the rhinestone jumpsuits and the drugs, when he was sharp and cool and jagged, like porcelain that has been hurled against a wall.

  Rick Bragg

  Wall, Drug, Porcelain

  8 Copy quote

• I have dictated stories from an airport after writing the story out in longhand on the plane that I got from phone interviews and then was applauded by editors for 'working magic.

  Rick Bragg

  Writing, Airports, Phones

  7 Copy quote

• The Haitians, who knew something about suffering and survival, had a beautiful phrase... The Translation is not perfect, but the nut of it was: 'The season of pain is never over until the sky begins to cry.

  Rick Bragg

  Beautiful, Pain, Nuts

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think there's a difference between writing for a newspaper or magazine and doing a chapter in a book.

  Rick Bragg

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  6 Copy quote

• The best writers who have put pen to paper have often had a journalism background.

  Rick Bragg

  Paper, Journalism, Backgrounds

  4 Copy quote

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