Jim Harrison Quotes
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What moves me most is style: the quality of the writing rather than the story being told.
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Unlike a lot of writers, I don't have any craving to be understood.
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I can't stand the short story form, which, after all, is a magazine form.
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I think about the sentence a long time, and then I write it. I don't revise it once it's set down.
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We are delightfully trapped by our memories. I can't drink a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape Vieux Telegraphe without revisiting a hotel bistro in Luzerne, Switzerland, where I ate a large bowl of a peppery Basque baby goat stew. A sip and a bite. A bite and sip. Goose bumps come with the divine conjunction of food and wine.
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I'm a time person. It's the one discipline I manage.
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I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was.
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I do have trouble with titles.
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Other than fishing and a little bird-hunting, all I do is write.
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Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth not so apparently devoid of angels.
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I rarely read or buy a book because of a review.
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I wasn't taking myself seriously as a novelist, and then it became my day job.
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I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.
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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.
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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.
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You have to temporarily be the character in order to understand him. It's sort of what they used to call 'shape-shifting.'
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I can write anywhere.
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Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.
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I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.
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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.
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I like grit. I like love and death. I'm tired of irony.
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Either you can do what others want, or you can do what you want to do. That's an easy call.
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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!
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We are supposed to write poetry to keep the gods alive.