Jim Harrison

Jim Harrison

"We are supposed to write poetry to keep the gods alive."
20 Quotes
"We are supposed to write poetry to keep the gods alive."
Jim Harrison
"Poetry, at its best, is the language your soul would speak if you could teach your soul to speak."
Jim Harrison
"Sometimes, I tell my wife I have to take a car trip and collect new memories - I like to drive around at absolute random for weeks on end through the United States and parts of Canada. Or else I feel trapped, like you feel when your life is completely planned for months in advance, and you think you're not getting enough oxygen."
Jim Harrison
"Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit."
Jim Harrison
"Given free rein, our imagination can get infinite."
Jim Harrison
"I don't trust anybody that doesn't do good work. I don't give them any credibility. If they can't write, why should I believe anything they have to say?"
Jim Harrison
"Marriage is survived just on the basis of ordinary etiquette, day in and day out. Also cooking together helps a lot... I've seen all these marriages that failed. Those people are always hollering at each other. That doesn't work."
Jim Harrison
"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."
Jim Harrison
"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."
Jim Harrison
"Age focuses you. You are much better concentrated. There's more time when you travel less, don't do book tours, avoid interviews or public appearances. You walk the dogs, fish, hunt, cook and write."
Jim Harrison
"The big curse of America, to me, is skinless, boneless chicken breasts. They're banal and relatively flavorless. The rest of the world's trying to get some fat to eat, and we're trying to ban it from our diet."
Jim Harrison
"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."
Jim Harrison
"We are delightfully trapped by our memories. I can't drink a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape Vieux Telegraphe without revisiting a hotel bistro in Luzerne, Switzerland, where I ate a large bowl of a peppery Basque baby goat stew. A sip and a bite. A bite and sip. Goose bumps come with the divine conjunction of food and wine."
Jim Harrison
"I work every morning, all morning, sometimes in the afternoons. Then sometimes I hunt in the afternoons - quail, doves, grouse up north - but just to stay alive, because writers die from their lifestyle but also from their lack of movement."
Jim Harrison
"You do manage a somewhat religious attitude toward your art. It is a calling rather than a job."
Jim Harrison
"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."
Jim Harrison
"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."
Jim Harrison
"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)"
Jim Harrison
"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)"
Jim Harrison
"A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed."
Jim Harrison
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