Quotes by Jim Harrison

About Jim Harrison:

James "Jim" Harrison is an American author known for his poetry, fiction, reviews, essays about the outdoors, and writings about food. He has been called "a force of nature", and his work has been compared to that of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Harrison's characters tend to be rural by birth and to have retained some qualities of their agrarian pioneer heritage in spite of their intelligence and some formal education. They attune themselves to both the natural and the civilized world, surrounded by excesses but determined to live their lives as well as possible.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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 wa...

Jim Harrison

His own life suddenly seemed repellently formal. Whom did he know or what did he know and whom did he love? Sitting on the stump under the burden of his father's death and even the mortality inherent in the dying, wildly colored canopy of leaves, he ...

Jim Harrison

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 democrac...

Jim Harrison

Sometimes the only answer to death is lunch.

Jim Harrison

The pursuit of truth, not of facts, is the business of fiction.

Jim Harrison

Any man who has got himself set over others and don't have any responsibility to something bigger than him is a son of a bitch.

Jim Harrison

I'm actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it's the place I know best.

Jim Harrison

I used to get criticized for putting food in novels.

Jim Harrison

So when I made some money, I didn't have any idea how one handled such a situation because no one in our family ever had any money.

Jim Harrison

Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit.

Jim Harrison

Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness. And they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy... or they become legend.

Jim Harrison

I'm not rational enough to be a good journalist.

Jim Harrison

Michigan is two radically different places - the North and the South which makes for good drama and contrast.

Jim Harrison

I couldn't run a tight schedule, and if you're any good at teaching, you get sucked dry because you like your students and you're trying to help them, but you don't have any time left to write yourself.

Jim Harrison

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

We are all naturally xenophobic.

Jim Harrison

New Yorkers are mostly interested in New York - in case you haven't noticed.

Jim Harrison

I rarely read or buy a book because of a review.

Jim Harrison

I don't see gender as the most significant fact of human existence.

Jim Harrison

I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now.

Jim Harrison

Author Bio

  • NameJim Harrison
  • DescriptionNovelist, poet, essayist
  • BornDecember 11, 1937
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionNovelist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship