A biography for Jim Harrisonhasn’t been written yet.
“Writing as a woman presents enormous problems but I have attempted it several times and haven't had many complaints.”
“Your kids inevitably want to move where they had their vacations when they were younger.”
“I don't think it matters how fast you write. It's how long you thought about it. I like to think of it as a well filling up. I think about it until the well is full, and then I let go.”
“If all I did was pretend I was Wilderness Jimmy, I would go stale. You know, I fish maybe 100 days of the year and bird-hunt, but if I didn't go to Paris once or twice a year, I'd be crazy.”
“A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.”
“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.”
“There is a neurologist, a woman over at Harvard who wanted me to come talk to them, and in France I have a lot of readers in the sciences. I can't tell you why.”
“When I write, I don't like to be around any humans.”
“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.”
“I don't see gender as the most significant fact of human existence.”
“You don't have to become what you already are, which is a relief.”
“I like grit. I like love and death. I'm tired of irony.”
“I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there.”
“Writers can write outside their ethnicity or sex depending how open and vulnerable they wish to be.”
“I can write anywhere.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I don't feel tentative when I start to write. I've usually thought about a novel or novella for several years and created a lot of juice and density and energy by that time so by the time I get ready to go, I just let 'er fling, you know.”
“The only durable sense of success is if you've followed your calling.”