Top 120 Jim Harrison Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “A mood can be a mud puddle to be jumped over.”

— Jim Harrison

102. “The fact is, the media never gets off the interstate unless there’s a major explosion.”

— Jim Harrison

103. “I hope to define my life, whatever is left, by migrations, south and north with the birds and far from the metallic fever of clocks, the self staring at the clock saying, “I must do this.” I can’t tell the time on the tongue of the river in the cool morning air, the smell of the ferment of greenery, the dust off the canyon’s rock walls, the swallows swooping above the scent of raw water.”

— Jim Harrison

104. “I need the solidity of a whole book because life often doesn’t cohere for me, I mean my perception of life, and I need to find some bedrock however temporary. It’s like books help me glue the parts of my life together into an acceptable whole.”

— Jim Harrison

105. “All artists as a type seem to suffer a great deal, but then so do miners.”

— Jim Harrison

106. “Much earlier in this century an Austrian journalist, Karl Kraus, pointed out that if you actually perceived the true reality behind the news you would run, screaming, into the streets. I have run screaming into the streets dozens of times but have always managed to return home in time for dinner-and usually an hour early so that I can help in the preparation.”

— Jim Harrison

107. “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

108. “Some of our strangest actions are also our most deeply characteristic: secret desires remain weak fantasies unless they pervade a will strong enough to carry them out.”

— Jim Harrison

109. “Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit.”

— Jim Harrison

110. “Imagine if Congress were actually knowledgeable of American history.”

— Jim Harrison

111. “My advice is, do not try to inhabit another’s soul. You have your own.”

— Jim Harrison

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

— Jim Harrison

113. “Animals spend a lot of time being still so when we do they lose their logical mistrust of us.”

— Jim Harrison

114. “I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it’s about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.”

— Jim Harrison

115. “I find it impossible not to believe that there’s something in Irish blood that favors their power with words.”

— Jim Harrison

116. “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

117. “Short things are short all over and long things are long all over.”

— Jim Harrison

118. “Fifty years ago I learned to jump off the calendar but I kept getting drawn back on for reasons of greed and my imperishable stupidity.”

— Jim Harrison

119. “I do have trouble with titles.”

— Jim Harrison

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

— Jim Harrison

121. “We survive by learning from pain.”

— Jim Harrison

122. “You don’t have to become what you already are, which is a relief.”

— Jim Harrison

123. “I bought a ticket with the last of my money at the bus station, telling the agent that there certainly seemed to be a long, long road winding to the land of my dreams.”

— Jim Harrison

124. “Yeah, but now suddenly – you know, universities are notoriously market oriented, too.”

— Jim Harrison

125. “Pancakes with a slice of ham on top and three eggs on the slice of ham.”

— Jim Harrison

126. “There is a spine of goofiness in America that has never been deterred by literacy.”

— Jim Harrison

127. “Young people seem not to know that they are going to get old, but older people know that they are not going to become young again.”

— Jim Harrison

128. “She wasn’t trying to overcome life, only to get along with it, to blend with the processes she could scarcely understand in a world that had permitted her no solid ground.”

— Jim Harrison

129. “How can I be lost when I’ve never been found?”

— Jim Harrison

130. “I followed all the rules – man’s and God’s. And you... followed none of them and they all loved you more.”

— Jim Harrison

131. “Life is short. Why not be familiar with all of it?”

— Jim Harrison

132. “Treasure what you find already in your pocket, friend.”

— Jim Harrison

133. “The present passes too quickly to notice and I’ve never had a grip on the future, even as an idea.”

— Jim Harrison

134. “You live in a beautiful place and you don’t act like you know it.”

— Jim Harrison

135. “Trying to teach creativity is the major hoax of our time along with the Iraq war and plastic surgery.”

— Jim Harrison

136. “What is it the wind has lost that she keeps looking for under each leaf?”

— Jim Harrison

137. “A modern man, I do not make undue connections though my heart wrenches daily against the unknowable, almighty throb and heave of the universe against my skin that sings a song for which we haven’t quite found the words.”

— Jim Harrison

138. “In 1958 a friend in San Francisco burned out his veins shooting up hot paregoric, a cheap high. It’s safer for me to continue smoldering just below the temperature of actual flame wondering if there’s a distant land where life freely flows like a river. Years ago in a high green pasture near timberline I watched a small black bear on its back rolling back and forth and shimmying to scratch its back, pawing the air with pleasure, not likely wanting to be anywhere or anyone else.”

— Jim Harrison