Legends of the Fall

by Jim Harrison

Cochran was bright enough to realize that such simplicity and decisiveness were out of any truly civilized man’s reach.

dreams he built at age nineteen when all of us reach our zenith of idealistic nonsense. Nineteen is the age of the perfect foot soldier who will die without a murmur, his heart aflame with patriotism. Nineteen is the age at which the brain of a nascent poet in his rented room soars the highest, suffering gladly the assault of what he thinks is the god in him. Nineteen is the last year that a young woman will marry purely for love. And so on.

language was a convenience of the heart, not something to bludgeon people with.

Why should I want to know the strange when I am ignorant of the familiar.

hieratica relived slowly so that each page was turned