Jim Harrison

“I should add that I very much enjoy certain cities especially Paris, New York and Chicago.”

“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've never been a true fan of the short story and have only published a single example of my own.”

“I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.”

“I used to get criticized for putting food in novels.”

“I think about the sentence a long time, and then I write it. I don't revise it once it's set down.”

“The person that was closest to me growing up was my sister, who died at 19. She was an incredibly powerful girl, deeply committed to art and literature.”

“If I can't be fishing or hunting, I want to be in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.”

“I'm not rational enough to be a good journalist.”

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

“What moves me most is style: the quality of the writing rather than the story being told.”

“I do mourn my characters. I wrote an essay once where I was sure that far back in a marsh there was a hummock - a little hill of hardwoods - and an old farm house, where all the heroines in my novels lived together with all my beloved dead dogs. I've discussed this with my therapist, naturally. He says it's okay in fair amounts.”

“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)”

“Sometimes literary critics review the book they wanted you to write, not the book you wrote, and that's very irksome.”

“I had a concussion I didn't get over for three years. I think that's why I'm goofy.”

“There's something frightening about finding a woman who would take your heart.”

“I'm actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it's the place I know best.”

“I do have trouble with titles.”

“I'm outdoors a lot, so I get dark. Guess who gets stopped? I've been pulled over, and they ask, 'Where are you from?' I say, 'Montana.' They say, 'Are you sure? And I say, 'I'm reasonably sure I'm from Montana, but you know, this is a dream life.' You start on this shtick with them and it's fun.”

“Suits obviously had helped to promote bad government and he was as guilty as anyone for wearing them so steadfastly for twenty years. Of late he had become frightened of the government for the first time in his life, the way the structure of democracy had begun debasing people rather than enlivening them in their mutual concern. The structure was no longer concerned with the purpose for which it was designed, and a small part of the cause, Nordstrom thought, was probably that all politicians and bureaucrats wore suits.”