If people don't occasionally walk away from you shaking their heads, you're doing something wrong.

The solution to any problem -work, love, money, whatever -is to go fishing, and the worse the problem, the longer the trip should be.

I think I fish, in part, because it's an anti-social, bohemian business that, when gone about properly, puts you forever outside the mainstream culture without actually landing you in an institution.

Maybe your stature as a fly fisherman isn't determined by how big a trout you can catch, but by how small a trout you can catch without being disappointed.

Cell phones have changed us from a nation of self-reliant pioneer types into a bunch of men standing alone in supermarkets saying, ‘Okay, I’m in the tampon aisle, but I don’t see it.'

I used to like fishing because I thought it had some larger significance. Now I like fishing because it's the one thing I can think of that probably doesn't.

The best fisherman I know try not to make the same mistakes over and over again; instead they strive to make new and interesting mistakes and to remember what they learned from them.

I still enjoy the company of most dogs more than that of most people, because dogs are capable of uncomplicated enthusiasm.

It's an odd fact of life that whichever side of the stream you're on, two-thirds of the best water is out of reach on the other side.

Creeps and idiots cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip.

Fishing in rainy conditions may make fisherman seem crazy to the great mass of unimaginative people, but then few fishermen care what they think

People are fascinating. Especially the ones who hate me.

A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.

People sometimes attribute my success to my genius; all the genius I know anything about is hard work.

When you're a black woman, you seldom get to do what you just want to do; you always do what you have to do.

Tolerance enlarges the circle of our acquaintances.

Politics is like roller skating. You go partly where you want to go, and partly where the damn things take you.

Richard Jenkins read the script [The Hollars] and really liked it, but he said, 'If you can get Margo Martindale, I'll do it. Otherwise, good luck.

Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do.

We are attracted to people who express the qualities we deny or repress in ourselves.

Time, presence and physical attentiveness are our most basic proxies for something ultimately unprovable: that we are understood.