Allan Roberto > Allan's Quotes

“My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good things-trout as well as eternal salvation-come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“When I was young, a teacher had forbidden me to say "more perfect" because she said if a thing is perfect it can't be more so. But by now I had seen enough of life to have regained my confidence in it.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

“Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as "our brother's keepers," possessed of one of the oldest and possible one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting instincts. It will not let us go.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn’t. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“If our father had had his way, nobody who did not know
how to fish would be allowed to disgrace a fish by catching him.”
― Norman Maclean

“Unless we are willing to escape into sentimentality or fantasy, often the best we can do with catastrophes, even our own, is to find out exactly what happened and restore some of the missing parts.”
― Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

“...life every now and then becomes literature...as if life had been made and not happened.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“time was just a hangover from the past with no present meaning”
― Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

“As a Scot and a Presbyterian, my father believed that man by nature was a mess and had fallen from an original state of grace. Somehow, I early developed the notion that he had done this by falling from a tree. As for my father, I never knew whether he believed God was a mathematician but he certainly believed God could count and that only by picking up God's rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty. Unlike many Presbyterians, he often used the word "beautiful.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“For a scientist, this is a good way to live and die, maybe the ideal way for any of us - excitedly finding we were wrong and excitedly waiting for tomorrow to come so we can start over.”
― Norman Maclean

“At the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“What a beautiful world it was once. At least a river of it was.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“...it is not fly fishing if you are not looking for answers to questions.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“Poets talk about “spots of time,” but it is really fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“Many of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature—not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“Be comforted, dear soul! There is always light behind the clouds.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“for love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Conceit spoils the finest genius.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women