Jim Harrison

“I admit to occasionally sharing the financial hysteria of the rest of the country, the urgency to save more for the family in case you can't write any more.”

“Success and money can really be quite blinding.”

“I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.”

“Between the two dream coasts, we're just called flyover country... If you aren't known as an amorphous Eastern Seaboard writer, you're dismissed as a regional author.”

“The trajectory started when I was on the roof of our house looking out at a swamp when I was 19. I had written for several years, starting at about 15, but that day on the roof I took my vows and acknowledged my calling.”

“Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth not so apparently devoid of angels.”

“The fact is, the media never gets off the interstate unless there's a major explosion.”

“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.”

“Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.”

“Fiction writers tend to err either making people more than they are or less than they are. I'd rather err on the side of the former.”

“Either you can do what others want, or you can do what you want to do. That's an easy call.”

“I've got a poem that's in a lot of international anthologies called 'After the Anonymous Swedish' and I thought, 'Well, I'm a Swede. I can make up a Swedish poem.' It turned out pretty good.”

“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.”