Trying to teach creativity is the major hoax of our time along with the Iraq war and plastic surgery" ~ Snarky comment of Clive from "The River Swimmer" (pg 47)

The simple act of opening a bottle of wine has brought more happiness to the human race than all the collective governments in the history of earth

Barring love I'll take my life in large doses alone--rivers, forests, fish, grouse, mountains. Dogs.

The wilderness does not make you forget your normal life so much as it removes the distractions for proper remembering.

The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.

Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness and they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy, or they become legends.

In a life properly lived, you're a river.

Beware, O wanderer, the road is walking too.

Death steals everything except our stories.

Fishing makes us less the hostages to the horrors of making a living.

I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.

I think that we all drown, in one way or another.

Each moment, breath is nourishing millions and millions of cells in our body.Listen to its language, interpret its words and enter into the mystery of life.

Self-deprecation is the appropriate response of any new convert, as he matches his stained soul against the purity of God.

The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.

You can't sit on two chairs at once.

You might want to think twice before you try to use a man's conscience against him. It may turn out he doesn't have one.

One of the biggest problems of our contemporary civilization is that there's been an interruption of transmission. People have no past in their present.

My fans are all my girlfriends

When I was working with Stanley Kubrick [on "Eyes Wide Shut"], he would always say, "You never tell the audience what to feel. Let them choose to have their responses."

Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.