Jim Harrison Quotes

She wasn't trying to overcome life, only to get along with it, to blend with the processes she could scarcely understand in a world that had permitted her no solid ground.

Never before have the American people had their noses so deeply in one another's business. If I announce that I and eleven other diners shared a thirty-seven-course lunch that likely cost as much as a new Volvo station wagon, Those of a critical nature will let their minds run in tiny, aghast circles of condemnation. My response to them is that none of us twelve disciples of gourmandise wanted a new Volvo. We wanted only lunch and since lunch lasted approximately eleven hours we saved money by not having to buy diner. The defense rests.

Trying to teach creativity is the major hoax of our time along with the Iraq war and plastic surgery" ~ Snarky comment of Clive from "The River Swimmer" (pg 47)

You don't have to become what you already are, which is a relief.

I prefer the skylineof a shelf of books.

Suits obviously had helped to promote bad government and he was as guilty as anyone for wearing them so steadfastly for twenty years. Of late he had become frightened of the government for the first time in his life, the way the structure of democracy had begun debasing people rather than enlivening them in their mutual concern. The structure was no longer concerned with the purpose for which it was designed, and a small part of the cause, Nordstrom thought, was probably that all politicians and bureaucrats wore suits.

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

Wherever we go we do harm, forgivingourselves as wheels do cement for wearingeach other out. We set this houseon fire, forgetting that we live within.(from "To a Meadowlark," for M.L. Smoker)