Riley Smith Quotes

I just have this deep kind of connection to reality of being like... in a way, I feel like a dock worker. I want to stay in connection with my dock-worker side, 'cause that's how I grew up.

I was raised as a real worker: you know, you get out and get a real job.

I consider myself a blue-collar actor, just chugging away.

When I was 13, I had my first job with my dad carrying shingles up to the roof. And then I got a job washing dishes at a restaurant. And then I got a job in a grocery store deli. And then I got a job in a factory sweeping Cheerio dust off the ground.

I've worked in a factory. I was a garbage man. I worked in a post office. It's not that long ago. I like to think that I'm just a regular guy.

My dad, he was a construction worker. He was a butcher. He was a deep sea fisherman.

I've never felt like a pop star - this is a nine-to-five sort of gig. It comes from working in the factories, that world. You don't forget it.

Don't call me 'gentleman'. I work for a livin'.

I come from a pretty working-class neighborhood in Chicago. Hard work was just expected of you. It wasn't some noble thing you did; it was a prerequisite. It's what a man did. You get up, you put on your boots, and you work hard. We've lost a lot of that, I'm afraid.

My dad had this rock hard body and would work 12- to 13-hour days. The guys he worked with were scrap-iron guys. Nobody on that road crew had read a book in 10 years, but there was something about the way they lived I really admired.

My first job was to run a concessions cart. Later, I found a position at the Pacific Film Archive. Thus began a long series of jobs, each one slightly better than the last, that continued for a decade, until I sold my first novel, and still goes on, even now.

My family were really hard-working, blue-collar people, and I didn't know the idea or concept of working and having fun. I thought you just worked and made money to support your family.

I used to be a longshoreman. I didn't go to college. I have a voice that when I say something, it can sound way meaner than you think it is.

I love just working. I love the idea of being a working class citizen.

I've been working since I was a child. I worked cutting lawns, delivering newspapers; I was a telephone salesperson; I was a guitar repairman.

If I have any appeal at all, it's to the fellow who takes out the garbage.

I wanted to write something in a voice that was unique to who I was. And I wanted something that was accessible to the person who works at Dunkin Donuts or who drives a bus, someone who comes home with their feet hurting like my father, someone who's busy and has too many children, like my mother.

I've never been able to feel that there is anything undignified about making your living by the sweat of your brow.

I come from a very blue-collar family, and a very hardworking family, and I think that my work ethic is maybe the thing that kept me on the straight and narrow.

People who work in factories or in the woods or maybe a dairy farm - for years, I've been fascinated with people like that. No pretensions. They just live their lives. I found them beautiful. They were all I seemed to be interested in writing about.

Only by the sweat of my own brow. I am a totally working man.

All of the guys I know from Jersey held onto this feeling of, 'We're always just working.'

I'm just a normal guy and blue-collar historian, and people keep tuning in.

My father was incredible: a longshoreman; my mother was a secretary. Very 'go to work' people. That's how I saw things.

Me, I'm a working-class man, and I go to my job, put in the work, and walk away clean and unscathed, and I like it that way.