Quotes from Jim Harrison

We are all naturally xenophobic.

Sometimes, discomfort is very uncomfortable. Anybody can get occasionally tired of it, and then it can change fast, where it's comfort that disturbs you.

I wrote 'Legends of the Fall' in nine days, but I had been thinking about it for a few years.

You can't be unhappy in the middle of a big, beautiful river.

New Yorkers are mostly interested in New York - in case you haven't noticed.

I wasn't taking myself seriously as a novelist, and then it became my day job.

Whatever I learned reading 'Scientific American,' nothing can finally compete with your own observations.

Unlike a lot of writers, I don't have any craving to be understood.

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.

I remember my grandfather telling me how each of us must live with a full measure of loneliness that is inescapable, and we must not destroy ourselves with our passion to escape the aloneness.

I admit to occasionally sharing the financial hysteria of the rest of the country, the urgency to save more for the family in case you can't write any more.

You do manage a somewhat religious attitude toward your art. It is a calling rather than a job.

I'm afraid that eating in restaurants reflects one's experiences with movies, art galleries, novels, music - that is, characterized by mild amusement but with an overall feeling of stupidity and shame. Better to cook for yourself.

Your subconscious mind is trying to help you all the time. That's why I keep a journal - not for chatter but for mostly the images that flow into the mind or little ideas. I keep a running journal, and I have all of my life, so it's like your gold mine when you start writing.

I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.

I've always been intemperate in my affection for food.

I grew up in an agricultural family, and I never distanced myself from where the food comes from. I think it's quite natural.

I can write anywhere.

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

Birds are poems I haven't caught yet

Isabel saw all their lives becoming history in units of days and nights so fatally private there was no one left for her to love.

All artists as a type seem to suffer a great deal, but then so do miners.

My heart must open to the cosmos with no langauage unless we invent it moment by moment in order to breathe.

I seek the substantial in life.