Garth > Garth's Quotes

“You know how sometimes you lie in bed at night and think, “What if the law of gravity just wears out and lets go and I drift into space?” Does that ever make you anxious?”
― Elaine May

“The Japanese fought to win - it was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting and dirty business. Our commanders knew that if we were to win and survive, we must be trained realistically for it whether we liked it or not. In the post-war years, the U.S. Marine Corps came in for a great deal of undeserved criticism in my opinion, from well-meaning persons who did not comprehend the magnitude of stress and horror that combat can be. The technology that developed the rifle barrel, the machine gun and high explosive shells has turned war into prolonged, subhuman slaughter. Men must be trained realistically if they are to survive it without breaking, mentally and physically.”
― E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

“Until the millennium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others, it will be necessary to accept one's responsibilities and be willing to make sacrifices for one's country - as my comrades did. As the troops used to say, "If the country is good enough to live in, it's good enough to fight for." With privilege goes responsibility.”
― E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

“War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste... The only redeeming factors were my comrades' incredible bravery and their devotion to each other. Marine Corps training taught us to kill efficiently and to try to survive. But it also taught us loyalty to each other - and love. That espirit de corps sustained us.”
― Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

“Wherever we go we do harm, forgiving
ourselves as wheels do cement for wearing
each other out. We set this house
on fire, forgetting that we live within.

(from "To a Meadowlark," for M.L. Smoker)”
― Jim Harrison

“I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony.”
― Jim Harrison

“I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.”
― Jim Harrison

“Birthdays are ghost bounty hunters that track you down to ask, "Que pasa, baby?”
― Jim Harrison

“Beware, O wanderer, the road is walking too.”
― Jim Harrison, After Ikkyu & Other Poems

“The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.”
― Jim Harrison, The Beast God Forgot to Invent

“Death steals everything except our stories.”
― Jim Harrison, In Search of Small Gods

“The Statue of Liberty, that frequently malevolent bitch, has an enormous tumor in her gut that has spread to her brain and eyes. With regard to the Native Americans she has Alzheimer's or mad cow disease and can't remember her past, and her blind eyes can't see the terrifying plight of most of the Indian tribes. Meanwhile she blows China and stomps Cuba to death, choosing to forget the Native cultures she has already destroyed.”
― Jim Harrison, On the Trail to Wounded Knee: The Big Foot Memorial Ride

“The reason to moderate is to avoid having to quit.”
― Jim Harrison, Off to the Side: A Memoir

“The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps.
”
― Jim Harrison

“Everyday I wonder how many things I am dead wrong about.”
― Jim Harrison

“We set this house on fire forgetting that we live within. ”
― Jim Harrison, Saving Daylight

“How wonderful it was to love something without the compromise of language.”
― Jim Harrison, The River Swimmer: Novellas

“It's very difficult to look at the World
and into your heart at the same time.
In between, a life has passed.”
― Jim Harrison, After Ikkyu & Other Poems

“Perhaps swimming was dancing under the water, he thought. To swim under lily pads seeing their green slender stalks wavering as you passed, to swim under upraised logs past schools of sunfish and bluegills, to swim through reed beds past wriggling water snakes and miniature turtles, to swim in small lakes, big lakes, Lake Michigan, to swim in small farm ponds, creeks, rivers, giant rivers where one was swept along easefully by the current, to swim naked alone at night when you were nineteen and so alone you felt like you were choking every waking moment, having left home for reasons more hormonal than rational; reasons having to do with the abstraction of the future and one's questionable place in the world of the future, an absurdity not the less harsh for being so widespread.”
― Jim Harrison, The Man Who Gave Up His Name

“I was on the verge of jumping into one of those holes in life out of which we emerge a bit tattered and bloody, though we remain sure nonetheless that we had to make the jump.”
― Jim Harrison, Dalva

“I seek the substantial in life.”
― Jim Harrison, Just Before Dark: A Classic American Writer's Essays―Twenty-Five Years of Passions from Ice Fishing to Nouvelle Cuisine

“When we die we are only stories in the minds of others, I thought”
― Jim Harrison, The Road Home

“Suits obviously had helped to promote bad government and he was as guilty as anyone for wearing them so steadfastly for twenty years. Of late he had become frightened of the government for the first time in his life, the way the structure of democracy had begun debasing people rather than enlivening them in their mutual concern. The structure was no longer concerned with the purpose for which it was designed, and a small part of the cause, Nordstrom thought, was probably that all politicians and bureaucrats wore suits.”
― Jim Harrison, Legends of the Fall

“If you live on the railroad tracks the train's going to hit you, Grandpa used to say. -- Brown Dog”
― Jim Harrison

“One thing that has gone wrong in America is the general acceptance of bad ham”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“Life is an honor, albeit anonymously delivered.”
― Jim Harrison, In Search of Small Gods

“He looked around the clearing in recognition that he was lost but didn’t mind because he knew he had never been found.”
― Jim Harrison, Legends of the Fall

“The head's a cloud anchor that the feet must follow. Travel light, he said, or don't travel at all.”
― Jim Harrison, The Theory & Practice of Rivers and New Poems

“The idea is to eat well and not die from it - for the simple reason that that would be the end of my eating.”
― Jim Harrison

“Perhaps swimming was dancing in the water, he thought. To swim under lily pads seeing their green slender stalks wavering as you passed, to swim under upraised logs past schools of sunfish and bluegills, to swim through reed beds past wriggling water snakes and miniature turtles, to swim in small lakes, big lakes, Lake Michigan, to swim in small farm ponds, creeks, rivers, giant rivers where one was swept along easefully by the current, to swim naked alone at night when you were nineteen and so alone you felt like you were choking every waking moment, having left home for reasons more hormonal than rational; reasons having to do with the abstraction of the future and one's questionable place in the world of the future, an absurdity not the less harsh for being so widespread.”
― Jim Harrison, Legends of the Fall