A biography for Jim Harrisonhasn’t been written yet.
“Food is a great literary theme. Food in eternity, food and sex, food and lust. Food is a part of the whole of life. Food is not separate.”
“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 think the trouble with artists or chefs who whine about criticism is that if you love the good reviews, you have to at least read the bad ones.”
“Riesling? It smells like an intensive care ward.”
“The idea is to eat well and not die from it - for the simple reason that that would be the end of your eating.”
“I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question.”
“The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps.”
“I couldn't run a tight schedule, and if you're any good at teaching, you get sucked dry because you like your students and you're trying to help them, but you don't have any time left to write yourself.”
“I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now.”
“The reviews are getting better, but they always do, in time, if you're still alive.”
“I used to have this illusion that time and remote areas prepare you for the world. Our moms used to think that kind of thing. Well, it doesn't prepare you for the world at all!”
“There aren't any real dumb people in my voices. It's always irritated me about Hollywood dialogue - there's so much dialogue that would just bore a Ford mechanic. This is not how people talk.”
“I don't want to go around like some kind of bleeding giant or whatever, or thinking I'm a big deal, because it doesn't help you do your work. I think people like Hemingway got into an awful lot of trouble that way.”
“We pretend that the brain is binary, like a computer. But it's not. It's completely holographic.”
“Michigan is two radically different places - the North and the South which makes for good drama and contrast.”
“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.”
“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.”
“You have to temporarily be the character in order to understand him. It's sort of what they used to call 'shape-shifting.'”
“You can't be unhappy in the middle of a big, beautiful river.”
“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)”