Jim Harrison Quotes

“The days are stacked against what we think we are.”

“The world that used to nurse us
now keeps shouting inane instructions.
That's why I ran to the woods.”

“The reason to moderate is to avoid having to quit.”

“It is easy to forget that in the main we die only seven times more slowly than our dogs.”

“Death steals everything except our stories.”

“The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.”

“Barring love I'll take my life in large doses alone--rivers, forests, fish, grouse, mountains. Dogs.”

“Birthdays are ghost bounty hunters that track you down to ask, "Que pasa, baby?”

“Beware, O wanderer, the road is walking too.”

“Sometimes the only answer to death is lunch.”

“My advice is, do not try to inhabit another's soul. You have your own.”

“Being a writer requires an intoxication with language.”

“Dad said I would always be "high minded and low waged" from reading too much Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe he was right.”

“Every day I wonder how many things I am dead wrong about. -- True North”

“Wherever we go we do harm, forgiving
ourselves as wheels do cement for wearing
each other out. We set this house
on fire, forgetting that we live within.

(from "To a Meadowlark," for M. L. Smoker)”

“I'm hoping to be astonished tomorrow
by I don't know what.”

“If you added it up, without her there was nothing--but with her even the simplest of gestures of walking a bird dog in the desert, or selecting the ingredients for a meal for two rather than one took on an ineffable charm.

(from the novella,)”