Quotes from Jim Harrison

I couldn't read a screenplay without puking.

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

Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness. And they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy... or they become legend.

There aren't any real dumb people in my voices. It's always irritated me about Hollywood dialogue - there's so much dialogue that would just bore a Ford mechanic. This is not how people talk.

I can't stand the short story form, which, after all, is a magazine form.

My biggest pet peeve is when you go to a fine restaurant, and it's like a mausoleum inside. Good food should be joyful. There should be laughter and chatter, not people sitting there like they're in a funeral-parlor waiting room.

You can be in terrible shape, and if you take a three-hour walk through the forest and along the river, you're simply not the same as when you started out.

The only durable sense of success is if you've followed your calling.

Riesling? It smells like an intensive care ward.

Poetry at its best is the language your soul would speak if you could teach your soul to speak.

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

The simple act of opening a bottle of wine has brought more happiness to the human race than all the collective governments in the history of earth

I won't talk or deal with a young writer unless I sense he has utterly given his life over to it. It's a waste of my time. If they don't feel 'called' - why in God's name would you do this?

I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was.

I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.

The person that was closest to me growing up was my sister, who died at 19. She was an incredibly powerful girl, deeply committed to art and literature.

If all I did was answer the correspondence I get, that would be my job.

Sometimes literary critics review the book they wanted you to write, not the book you wrote, and that's very irksome.

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

In a life properly lived, you're a river.

Life is sentimental. Why should I be cold and hard about it? That's the main content. The biggest thing in people's lives is their loves and dreams and visions, you know.

I became aesthetically obsessed with language. And 'literary artist' - poet and novelist - is a calling. You are called to it the way preachers are called to preaching the gospel.

Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth not so apparently devoid of angels.

Writing as a woman presents enormous problems but I have attempted it several times and haven't had many complaints.