Jim Harrison Quotes - Page 3

When we were children we were errant enough to wish to be birds for the day but there's nothing easier to lose than playfulness.

The old fun thing is when somebody typed up the first chapter of War and Peace. And then made a precis of the rest of it and sent it out and only one publisher recognized it.

A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.

Being a writer requires an intoxication with language.

Life is an honor, albeit anonymously delivered.

I don't see gender as the most significant fact of human existence.

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.

The wife picked out ceramic tile for floor covering, not realizing that cost was determined by square foot, not square yard like carpet. Thinking the price was plenty reasonable, she had an extra room of tile ordered for installation. When the bill arrived, it was staggering. She and her husband began a fight that continued all through the construction job. They ended up divorced, but not until she had broken every window.

I'm actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it's the place I know best.

We are all naturally xenophobic.

I seek the substantial in life.

How wonderful it was to love something without the compromise of language.

I can write anywhere.

I should add that I very much enjoy certain cities especially Paris, New York and Chicago.

As an English major I was familiar with the stories of dozens of writers trying to get their work done among the multifarious diversions of the world and the hurdles of their own vices. A professor had said that what saved writers is that they, like politicians, had the illusion of destiny that allowed them to overcome obstacles no matter how nominal their work.

I wonder, when a writer's blocked and doesn't have any resources to pull himself out of it, why doesn't he jump in his car and drive around the U.S.A.? I went last winter for seven thousand miles and it was lovely. Inexpensive, too.

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

After a lifetime of world travel I've been fascinated that those in the third world don't have the same perception of reality that we do.

I had let my digust with teaching ruin my love of literature.

When we die we are only stories in the minds of others, I thought

Short things are short all over and long things are long all over.

The fact is, the media never gets off the interstate unless there's a major explosion.

Success and money can really be quite blinding.

Fate has never ladled out hardship very evenly, and this frequently trips our often infantile sense of justice.

Fishing tournaments seem a little like playing tennis with living balls.