James Richardson Quotes

Only half of writing is saying what you mean. The other half is preventing people from reading what they expected you to mean.

Nothing important comes with instructions.

What is more yours than what always holds you back?

Writing is like washing windows in the sun. With every attempt to perfect clarity, you make a new smear.

The best way to know your faults is to notice which ones you accuse others of.

When I am trying to write I turn on music so I can hear what is keeping me from hearing.

Sophistication is upscale conformity.

The happy and the suffering probably understand life equally well, but the sufferers may see a little more clearly how little it is that they understand.

It is the empty seats that listen most raptly.

You have two kinds of secrets. The ones only you know. The ones only you don't.

Tyranny and fantasy both like to write everyone else's lines.

All work is the avoidance of harder work.

There are silences harder to take back than words.

Any virtue systematically applied becomes a vice. Morality is attention, not system.

I'm a kid checking mail, a kid on his cell with his questions: are we in love, Life, are we exclusive, are we forever?

If you do more than your share you'd better want to: otherwise, you're paying yourself in a currency recognized nowhere else.

I would never accuse Willie Brown of slowing down, because he never does.

Reason is the lesser faith that steers us when we have already lost a greater one.

Who breaks the thread, the one who pulls, the one who holds on?

They say productivity is the key to confidence, and confidence ... to productivity. And they're happy walking back and forth between these two rooms, each the excuse for the other.

Too much apology doubles the offense.

Anger has been ready to be angry.

If it can be used again, it is not wisdom but theory.

How sure we are that everyone's watching. How sure we are that no one sees.

Bitterness is a greater failure than failure.

I don't know what's meant by Know thyself, which seems to ask a window to look at a window.

Say too soon what you think and you will say what everyone else thinks.

I sell my time to get enough money to buy it back.