“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...”
Author detail
James Harrison was born in Grayling, Michigan, the son of a county agricultural agent. He was blinded in one eye in childhood. His father and sister died in a car accident when he was 21. He attended Michigan State University and received a B.A. in 1960 and an M.A in 1964 in Comparative Literature. After working as an assistant professor of English at State University of New York, Stony Brook, he became a full-time writer.
Quotes
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“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...”
“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 sunfis...”
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“It's very difficult to look at the World and into your heart at the same time. In between, a life has passed.”
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“A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.”
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“Sometimes the only answer to death is lunch.”
“I became aesthetically obsessed with language. And 'literary artist' - poet and novelist - is a calling. You are called to it the way preachers are called to preaching the gospel.”
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“The big curse of America, to me, is skinless, boneless chicken breasts. They're banal and relatively flavorless. The rest of the world's trying to get some fat to eat, and we're trying to ba...”
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“We pretend that the brain is binary, like a computer. But it's not. It's completely holographic.”
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“I don't want to go around like some kind of bleeding giant or whatever, or thinking I'm a big deal, because it doesn't help you do your work. I think people like Hemingway got into an awful...”
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“Success and money can really be quite blinding.”
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“We are delightfully trapped by our memories. I can't drink a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape Vieux Telegraphe without revisiting a hotel bistro in Luzerne, Switzerland, where I ate a large bow...”
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“My biggest pet peeve is when you go to a fine restaurant, and it's like a mausoleum inside. Good food should be joyful. There should be laughter and chatter, not people sitting there like th...”
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“Your subconscious mind is trying to help you all the time. That's why I keep a journal - not for chatter but for mostly the images that flow into the mind or little ideas. I keep a running j...”
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“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.”
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“If all I did was answer the correspondence I get, that would be my job.”
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“I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.”
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“I wasn't taking myself seriously as a novelist, and then it became my day job.”
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“I don't feel tentative when I start to write. I've usually thought about a novel or novella for several years and created a lot of juice and density and energy by that time so by the time I...”
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“I work every morning, all morning, sometimes in the afternoons. Then sometimes I hunt in the afternoons - quail, doves, grouse up north - but just to stay alive, because writers die from the...”
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“I'm outdoors a lot, so I get dark. Guess who gets stopped? I've been pulled over, and they ask, 'Where are you from?' I say, 'Montana.' They say, 'Are you sure? And I say, 'I'm reasonably su...”
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