“His own life suddenly seemed repellently formal. Whom did he know or what did he know and whom did he love? Sitting on the stump under the burden of his father's death and even the mortality inherent in the dying, wildly colored canopy of leaves, he somehow understood that life was only what one did every day.... Nothing was like anything else, including himself, and everything was changing all of the time. He knew he couldn't perceive the change because he was changing too, along with everything else.”

American poet, novelist, and essayist

Jim Harrison was an American poet, novelist, and essayist. He wrote across the 20th and early 21st centuries, and remains best known for the range of his work and for the poems he valued most. He is associated with 113 quotes on this site. Harrison published more than three dozen books in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, children’s literature, and memoir. He also wrote screenplays, book reviews, and literary criticism, and he published essays on food, travel, and sport. Among his many forms, he said poetry mattered most to him.