Steve Ramirez > Quotes

“We are souls with bodies, not the other way around. Without the essence of who we are—intact and authentically within our vessels—we are unblinking, inanimate objects; we are no longer soil. . . we are dirt.”

~ Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward: Fishing Tales from the Texas Hill Country

“I’ve learned a lot in this year. I’ve learned that the way to get your soul back isn’t to chase it but rather to quietly wait for it. When you’re ready, it finds you.”

~ Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward: Fishing Tales from the Texas Hill Country

“So, you stand in the river, facing upstream with the water rushing down upon you as if it could somehow fill the hollow emptiness—and somehow, it always does. So it was one morning. I stood there, without even casting and with no trout rising, and as the water rushed past me, I knew it was washing my burdens behind me, swirling them downstream like the autumn leaves. There is a great deal about living that trout can teach us. They teach us how to keep swimming even in a steady current. Trout know that if they stop swimming, they cease to be trout and begin to become debris, floating without purpose wherever the current may take them. Trout know that if they keep swimming, facing into the current, perhaps in the eddy of a rock, all that they need to truly live will eventually come to them. I learn a great deal from trout.”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward: Fishing Tales from the Texas Hill Country

“Life is a circle, not a line. Circles describe nature from a bird’s nest to raindrops striking a pond. I’d like my life to be round, like that. I’d like my life to be natural.”

~ Steve Ramirez, from The Things That Matter”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Onward: Adventures in Search of America's Native Fish

“If silence is golden then stillness is magical and sometimes the universe is suspended, just below the surface. I knew then what I have always known. If we’re seeking something of value, often… we have to go deep.”

~ Steve Ramirez, from The Silent Act of Knowing”
― Steve Ramirez

“Anglers are optimists. If we’re honest, we’d admit that we expect a fish at the end of every cast and are somewhere between surprised and dumbfounded when our expectations are foiled, again and again.

~ Steve Ramirez, from Casting Seaward”
― Steve Ramirez

“Life often flips off the hook. Nothing lasts forever, and all we can do is enjoy whatever comes our way.”

~ Steve Ramirez, from Casting Onward”
― Steve Ramirez

“The reason I love small-stream fishing is because it’s a game of strategy. It’s like golf without the silly clothes. It’s like chess without the long moments of boredom whenever it’s not your move. In small-stream fishing, it’s always your move.

~ Steve Ramirez, from Casting Onward”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Onward: Adventures in Search of America's Native Fish

“The problem with being a river is that once you spill yourself out for the good of every tree and blade of grass there is nothing left of you to tumble over the rocks.”

~ Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward: Fishing Tales from the Texas Hill Country

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger—something better, pushing right back. ~ ALBERT CAMUS”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward: Fishing Tales from the Texas Hill Country

“There are important lessons we can learn from solitude and silence. No one has ever learned a thing while talking. There are lessons about what does and does not matter. There are lessons to be learned about living authentically in the moment, and about impermanence and the power of our choices. Listening without expectation, is how I grow.”

~ Steve Ramirez, from The Silent Act of Knowing”
― Steve Ramirez

“Words are my petroglyphs. I scratch them out on a more or less durable rock. I paint them in colors wrung from nature like squeezing out my dreams and finger-tip painting on my limestone-self. They reflect and sustain my most noble nature. They are my tapping on the prison wall.”

~ Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward”
― Steve Ramirez

“Fly-fishing makes you live through the trout’s eyes. Like the trout, you live in the water and learn of the currents. You reach up into the air to grasp that which sustains you. Fly-fishing connects you to the trout’s world, and in doing so, your own.”

~ Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward: Fishing Tales from the Texas Hill Country

“When I think of all the time I have spent in this finite life, sitting in meetings with academics, politicians, and other blowhards, listening to inflated egos pontificate at length about the grand value of nothing, I become overwhelmed with a mixture of ironic amusement and idiotic regret. After all, I could have been fishing.

~ Steve Ramirez, from Casting Onward”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Onward: Adventures in Search of America's Native Fish

“Life and fishing are neither good nor bad, they simply are as they are. Acceptance is freedom. Freedom is joy.”

~ Steve Ramirez, from Casting Seaward”
― Steve Ramirez

“If every angler, hunter, and hiker became a naturalist, we’d make better choices and create a better world.”

~ Steve Ramirez, from Casting Onward”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Onward: Adventures in Search of America's Native Fish

“Whenever we are lost, we must remember that our compass is all around us. Nature is our Guide. Everything is connected to everything. We are One.”

~ Steve Ramirez, from Casting Onward”
― Steve Ramirez

“Do you quit? No, you may cast to that spot again, or you may cast to another, working the river naturally, without thought, moment by moment, until you find the place where what you seek finds you. This is what we must do, you and me.” She smiled.”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward: Fishing Tales from the Texas Hill Country

“and assorted social posturing I thus escape. Because in a world where most men seem to spend their lives doing what they hate, my fishing is at once an endless source of delight and an act of”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward: Fishing Tales from the Texas Hill Country

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward: Fishing Tales from the Texas Hill Country

“I stood there, without even casting and with no trout rising, and as the water rushed past me, I knew it was washing my burdens behind me, swirling them downstream like the autumn leaves.”

~ Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward”
― Steve Ramirez

“It’s so easy to slip into the illusion that life orbits around our own personal gravitational pull. It’s easy to begin thinking that the universe owes us a living, it doesn’t—we owe us a living.”

~ Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward: Fishing Tales from the Texas Hill Country

“that it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself.”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Forward: Fishing Tales from the Texas Hill Country

“Here is my hope: “Every angler is a naturalist.” If we genuinely love the great outdoors, we need to actually love it.

So many people seem to mix up love with use. When you love someone, you don’t use them, you participate in their lives. You are on their team and they are on yours. If you love someone, you protect them and help them grow healthy and free. Love is always a key and never a cage. Love is unconditional, not transactional.

~ Steve Ramirez, from Casting Onward”
― Steve Ramirez, Casting Onward: Adventures in Search of America's Native Fish