14 quotes
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.
A River Runs Through It (1976)
The brain gives up a lot less easily than the body.
A River Runs Through It (1976)
A mystery of the universe is how it has managed to survive with so much volunteer help.
Young Men and Fire (1992)
"It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us."
A River Runs Through It (1976)
In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.
A River Runs Through It (1976)
At a high level of universality, to write anything well, whether it be intellectual or imaginative, is to assume at least two obligations: to be intelligible and to be interesting.
One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful even if it is only a floating ash.
A River Runs Through It (1976)
It was now one of those moments when nothing remains but an opening in the sky and a story — and maybe something of a poem.
A River Runs Through It (1976)
It shouldn't be hard to imagine just what most of the crew must have thought when they first looked across the open hill-side and saw their boss seemingly playing with a matchbook in dry grass.
Young Men and Fire (1992)
My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things — trout as well as eternal salvation — come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.
A River Runs Through It (1976)
Unless we are willing to escape into sentimentality or fantasy, often the best we can do with catastrophes, even our own, is to find out exactly what happened and restore some of the missing parts — hopefully, even the arch to the sky.
Young Men and Fire (1992)
It is very important to a lot of people to make unmistakably clear to themselves and to the universe that they love the universe but are not intimidated by it and will not be shaken by it, no matter what it has in store. Moreover, they demand something from themselves early in life that can be taken ever after as a demonstration of this abiding feeling.
Painted on one side of our Sunday school wall were the words, God is Love. We always assumed that these three words were spoken directly to the four of us in our family and had no reference to the world outside, which my brother and I soon discovered was full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the farther one gets from Missoula, Montana.
A River Runs Through It (1976)
To project ourselves into their final thoughts will require feelings about a special kind of death - the sudden death in fire of the young, elite, unfulfilled, and seemingly unconquerable. As the elite of young men, they felt more surely than most who are young that they were immortal.