Patrick F. McManus > Quotes

“There is no greater fan of fly fishing then the worm.”
― Patrick F. McManus

“Writers live with fear. Some writers cannot deal with the fear, and so they quit or refuse to publish. In order to write, you must either ignore the fear or trick it into leaving you alone. The fear is very sly, though and hard to trick. The fear in writing comes from exposing your thoughts, your emotions, your experiences, your ideas, your talent, your intelligence and ultimately your self to public scrutiny and possible scorn. The fear is by no means groundless. You have opened yourself up to the possibility of public humiliations...I sometimes wonder if perhaps the greatest novel ever written isn't gathering dust in some filing cabinet somewhere, simply because its author could not overcome the fear of having it published.”
― Patrick Mcmanus

“There is nothing better than to be headed into the mountains on a clean fresh day with the sun rising through the trees and good company and good talk and the sense of ease that comes from the knowledge that you are in somebody else's car and it is not your transmission that is going to get torn out on a big rock.”
― Patrick Mcmanus, They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?

“It's been a long, hard day, and bit by bit you have been transformed into a single, vertical, barely ambulatory ache. All that awaits you now is another long, lonely night on the hard, cold ground. "What am I doing out here?" you ask yourself. "I must be mad!" Indeed, you are mad. Otherwise right now you could be warm and cozy and stretched out in front of your beloved TV, munching popcorn and swigging down ice-cold brew, just like a civilized person. "Oh well," you sigh to yourself. "I'd better stop and get a fire going.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Bear in the Attic

“The machete was needed anytime you had to slash out your own trail. This necessity arose more often than a person who is not a kid with a machete might think.”
― Patrick F. McManus, A Fine and Pleasant Misery

“What's the hurry?" he said
"This door is locked," Tully told him.
"So?"
"Can you pick a lock?"
"I'll give it a try."
"Be my guest" Tully said, stepping to one side.
Pap blew the lock away with the shotgun. He pushed the door open with the barrel.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Blight Way

“Rancid was poor. He didn't seem to know that he was poor, however, and I never had the heart to tell him, because he was the happiest person I'd ever met. If he had known he was poor, of course, then he would have been sad and miserable all the time. As it was, Rancid was able to live out his whole life in blissful ignorance of the fact that he was poor.”
― Patrick F. McManus, They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?

“You know how to check fer thin ice, boy?" he would ask me. "Wall, what you do is stick one foot way out ahead of you and stomp the ice real hard and listen fer it to make a crackin' sound. Thar now, did you hear how the ice cracked whan Ah stomped it? Thet means it's too thin to hold a man's weight. Now pull me up out of hyar and we'll run back to shore and see if we kin built a fahr b'fore Ah freezes to death!”
― Patrick Mcmanus, They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?

“While I was explaining to my own doctor that I was planning to undertake some serious exercise, I happened to mention that I thought I had lost quite a bit of weight since my last physical. “You didn’t lose it,” he said. “It just slipped around to your rear where you can’t see it.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories

“One word of caution, though, should you ever buy commercial worms. If you go into a backwoods gas station and find a large, rough-looking woman behind the cash register, don’t ask, “Do you have worms?” My friend Retch Sweeney did that a while back. He should get out of his full-body cast any day now.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories

“One reason diplomats have so much trouble coming to any kind of agreement is that they sit in soft chairs around a large table with yellow pads in front of them to doodle on. They're too comfortable for serious negotiation. My theory is that world peace could be achieved in short order if the diplomats were made to hunker out in a barnyard and draw their proposals on the ground with sticks.

For hundreds of years, hunters have employed the hunker successfully in negotiating with farmers for permission to hunt their property. I myself am an expert hunkerer and would be willing to teach the technique free of charge to both Russian and American diplomats, just so we can get the present mess straightened out in a hurry.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Grasshopper Trap

“Pap said, "Lend me those bolt cutters, Bo"
"They're in the back of the Explorer."
The old man got out the bolt cutter, walked around and snipped one of the leads to the battery on each of the ATV's. The others stood in the darkness watching him, listening to the snip-snip of the bolt cutter.
"Not a bad idea," said Dave. "That way is any of them get past us, he's going to be on foot."
"There's that," Tully said. "And then there's the fact that the old man loves bolt cutters...”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Blight Way

“Poking at a campfire with a stick is one of life’s great satisfactions.”
― Patrick F. McManus

“Detecting the onset of hypothermia, I built a fire to keep warm. But that is to put it too simply, too casually. No fire ever enjoyed such devoted attention. Cornea transplants are slapdash by comparison. The proceedings opened with a short religious service. Then pieces of tinder were recruited individually, trained, and assigned particular duties. Over the tinder I placed larger pieces, some approaching the size of toothpicks. At last the delicate structure was ready for the match. And another match. And still another match! I melted the snow from the area with a few appropriate remarks, and tried again to light the fire. This time it took. A feeble, wispy little blaze ate a piece of tinder, gagged, and nearly died. I gave it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It struggled back to life, sampled one of the toothpicks, found the morsel to its liking, and ate another. The flame leaped into the kindling. Soon the robust blaze devoured even the wet branches I fed to it, first by the handful and then by the armful. A mere bonfire would not do, I wanted an inferno. A person lost in winter knows no excess when it comes to his fire.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Grasshopper Trap

“I could still tell due north from my left elbow, but only because one of them itched.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Grasshopper Trap

“The greatest joy in fishing comes not from the fish you catch, but from the lies you tell about the ones that got away.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories

“Another thing I like about fishing with maggots is that if left alone they turn into flies. What kind of future is that for them? You have saved them from that particular horror, for which they should thank you copiously.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories

“I believe it is the inability of beginning writers to achieve at least a certain degree of detachment from their writing that defeats so many of them before they even get started. Without this distancing, any criticism of your writing will seem devastating, even incapacitating, whereas with the proper amount of detachment it will seem merely cruel and unusual punishment.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Deer on a Bicycle: Excursions Into the Writing of Humor

“I’m a member of the latter group and have been ever since my wife came across ajar of my hellgrammites while she was sorting through the refrigerator in search of some mayonnaise. The incident would probably have passed without any lingering ill effects had she not at the time been entertaining her church bridge club. It is difficult to describe the resulting commotion with any accuracy, but I learned later that cards from our bridge deck were found as far away as three blocks and one of the olive-and-avocado sandwiches served at the party turned up in a ladies’ restroom halfway across town. Our dog was asleep on the front sidewalk when the ladies left, and it was weeks before we could get all the dents out of him left by their heels.”
― Patrick F. McManus, They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?

“For several years I was a student of Sigmund Freud. Then someone told me Freud was dead, which explained why his classes were so boring.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw

“When we got to where we had parked the old station wagon Hoov used for his filming jaunts, we grabbed the boat, one of the few ever made of cast iron, dragged it up the bank, and shoved it into the rear of the wagon.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw

“The alligator was very dead and had been that way a long time and was dried up and cracked and coming apart at the seams. Nobody wanted to take pictures of the dead alligator since it already had enough problems.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Grasshopper Trap

“Dumb guys, I’ve found, generally make the best friends, because they’re so much more interesting and exciting than smart guys, those guys who have the intelligence to recognize such a phenomenon as The Gap for what it is and stay home to tidy up their stamp and coin collections.”
― Patrick F. McManus, The Bear in the Attic

“Once, I returned home from work, hung up my coat, dropped my briefcase on the floor, and walked into the kitchen. Bun was at the stove cooking supper. She seemed different. “You’re home early,” she said, without looking up. She sounded different, too. Oddly, she appeared much taller than she had that morning. Then she turned around. There was a strange woman in my house cooking supper! We went through the usual leaping and yelling and feinting at each other that occurs on such occasions, until at last recognition dawned, she being the wife and mother of the family to whom I had sold our house the previous month.”
― Patrick F. McManus, How I Got This Way

“The commissioners were only politicians anyway and easily replaced.”
― Patrick F. McManus, Avalanche

“First of all, one is either a panicker or one isn’t, and the occasion of being lost is no time to start fretting about a flaw in one’s character. My own theory holds that it is best, if one is a panicker, to get the panic out of the system as quickly as possible”
― Patrick F. McManus, A Fine and Pleasant Misery

“Bobcat?” he says. “What bobcat?”
― Patrick F. McManus, A Fine and Pleasant Misery