Quotes By Jim Harrison

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

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

I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question.

Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit.

The trajectory started when I was on the roof of our house looking out at a swamp when I was 19. I had written for several years, starting at about 15, but that day on the roof I took my vows and acknowledged my calling.

I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose.

The fact is, the media never gets off the interstate unless there's a major explosion.

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

Success and money can really be quite blinding.

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

Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.

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

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

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.

We are all naturally xenophobic.

I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was.

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.

Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth not so apparently devoid of angels.

After a lifetime of world travel I've been fascinated that those in the third world don't have the same perception of reality that we do.

Your kids inevitably want to move where they had their vacations when they were younger.

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.

I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there.

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

I used to get criticized for putting food in novels.

Yeah, but now suddenly - you know, universities are notoriously market oriented, too.

I can write anywhere.

There is a neurologist, a woman over at Harvard who wanted me to come talk to them, and in France I have a lot of readers in the sciences. I can't tell you why.

Short things are short all over and long things are long all over.

The old fun thing is when somebody typed up the first chapter of War and Peace. And then made a precis of the rest of it and sent it out and only one publisher recognized it.

I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.