Quotes from Jim Harrison

We pretend that the brain is binary, like a computer. But it's not. It's completely holographic.

The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps.

I was on the verge of jumping into one of those holes in life out of which we emerge a bit tattered and bloody, though we remain sure nonetheless that we had to make the jump.

I think the trouble with artists or chefs who whine about criticism is that if you love the good reviews, you have to at least read the bad ones.

I'm a time person. It's the one discipline I manage.

Life is an honor, albeit anonymously delivered.

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.

Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit.

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.

I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony.

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.

I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.

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

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

Death steals everything except our stories.

Sometimes the only answer to death is lunch.

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

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.

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

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)

The days are stacked against what we think we are.