Jim Harrison Quotes
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Your subconscious mind is trying to help you all the time. That's why I keep a journal - not for chatter but for mostly the images that flow into the mind or little ideas. I keep a running journal, and I have all of my life, so it's like your gold mine when you start writing.
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You do manage a somewhat religious attitude toward your art. It is a calling rather than a job.
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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.
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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.
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Given free rein, our imagination can get infinite.
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So when I made some money, I didn't have any idea how one handled such a situation because no one in our family ever had any money.
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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.
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If all I did was answer the correspondence I get, that would be my job.
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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.
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There's something frightening about finding a woman who would take your heart.
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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.
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I grew up in an agricultural family, and I never distanced myself from where the food comes from. I think it's quite natural.
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Success and money can really be quite blinding.
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Riesling? It smells like an intensive care ward.
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Writers can write outside their ethnicity or sex depending how open and vulnerable they wish to be.
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Unlike a lot of writers, I don't have any craving to be understood.
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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.
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I can't stand the short story form, which, after all, is a magazine form.
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I don't trust anybody that doesn't do good work. I don't give them any credibility. If they can't write, why should I believe anything they have to say?
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My favorite thing is just walking in the woods. I can do it for days on end without tiring of it.
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I had a concussion I didn't get over for three years. I think that's why I'm goofy.
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I'm actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it's the place I know best.
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I've always been intemperate in my affection for food.
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I'm a time person. It's the one discipline I manage.