Quotes from Richard Brautigan

What we eat is funny and what we drink is even more hilarious: turkeys, Gallo port, hot dogs, watermelons, Popeyes, salmon croquettes, frappes, Christian Brothers port, orange rye bread, canteloupes, Popeyes, salads, cheese--booze, grub and Popeyes.

There was a stove pipe on top of the box, but there were no bullet holes in the pipe. I was amazed. Almost all the camp stoves we had seen in Idaho had been full of bullet holes. I guess it's only reasonable that people, when they get the chance, would want to shoot some old stove sitting in the woods." Excerpt From Trout Fishing in America

This man was so complicated that he could make a labyrinth seem like a straight line.

Bir günün olaÄŸanüstü olabilmesi için bir ÅŸeftalinin yettiÄŸi bir geçmiÅŸ zamanda bir yaz günü, s?ran?n sonunun gelmesini sab?rla bekleyen ve ÅŸeftalilerle dolu poÅŸetler ta??yan bir geyik sürüsüyle birlikte bir ren geyiÄŸi istasyonuna doÄŸru yol alan bir trendeydim sanki.

Bir ÅŸeyleri sürekli asaletle halleden insanlar var. O ÅŸeylerin ne olduÄŸunun önemi zaten yok.

It would have compromised his basic approach to life which was to have it as confusing, labyrinth-laden and fucked up as possible.

I hate eating dinner alone. It's like being dead.

I wonder what in the hell I was thinking about?' he said aloud to himself. 'I wonder if I'm losing my mind?' That was like a duck wondering why it flies south in the autumn or an old camel noticing one day that he has a hump on his back.

Ayn? ÅŸey benim de ba??ma gelmiÅŸti. YaÅŸl?ca bir kad?n? alabal?k nehri ile kar??t?rd???m? hat?rlad?m ve ondan özür diledim. Afedersiniz dedim. Sizin bir alabal?k nehri olduÄŸunuzu sand?m. DeÄŸilim. dedi. Amerika'da Alabal?k Av? kitab?ndan

Invece di avere soltanto qualche chilometro e talvolta soltanto pochi centimetri tra un problema e l'altro, perché non incrementare la distanza? Sarebbe bello una volta tanto avere 47 chilometri tra un problema e l'altro e magari in 47 chilometri un po' di pace potrebbe spuntare come una giunchiglia in mezzo ai miei problemi.

Their future was America and three long years of searching and a process of gradual character disintegration and a slow retreat from respectability and self-pride. In three years they would become what they had always despised.

The fish was a twelve-inch rainbow trout with a huge hump on its back. A hunchback trout.

Hello, sir. Yes...Uh-huh...Yes...You say that you want to bury your aunt with a Christmas tree in her coffin? Uh-huh...She wanted it that way...I'll see what I can do for you, sir. Oh, you have the measurements of the coffin with you? Very good...We have our coffin-sized Christmas trees right over here, sir.

It was a hot day and the Ferris wheel was turning in the air like a thermometer bent in a circle and given the grace of music.

I remember mistaking an old woman for a trout stream in Vermont, and I had to beg her pardon. Excuse me, I said, I thought you were trout stream. I'm not, she said.

I saw Trout Fishing in America Shorty passed out in the front window of a Filipino laundromat. He was sitting in his wheelchair with closed eyes staring out the window. There was a tranquil expression on his face. He almost looked human. He had probably fallen asleep while he was having his brains washed in one of the machines. (from The Shipping of Trout Fishing in America Shorty to Nelson Algren, page 47)

As the Bruises Fade, the Lightning Aches" As the bruises fade, the lightning aches. Last week, making love, you bit me. Now the blue and dark have gone and yellow bruises grow toward pale daffodils, then paler to become until my body is all my own and what that ever got me.

It would be convenient if one could redesign the past, change a few things here and there, like certain acts of outrageous stupidity, but if one could do that, the past would always be in motion. It would never settle down finally to days of solid marble.

Toronto will always be like the flipside of a dream for me. I called heads but Toronto came up tails.

The man who owned the bookstore was, of course, a Jew, a retired merchant seamen who had been torpedoed in the north Atlantic and floated there day after day until death did not want him. He had a young wife, a heart attack, a Volkswagen, and a home. He learned about life at 16, first from Dostoyevsky and then from the whores of New Orleans.

He created his own Kool-Aid reality and was able to illuminate himself by it.

Jack had some kind of idea that it was all wrong for a car to have a house.

She was a perfect freeway Mona Lisa.

His eyes were like the shoelaces of a harpsichord.