The English Major Quotes

“Dad said I would always be "high minded and low waged" from reading too much Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe he was right.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“One thing that has gone wrong in America is the general acceptance of bad ham”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“As an English major I was familiar with the stories of dozens of writers trying to get their work done among the multifarious diversions of the world and the hurdles of their own vices. A professor had said that what saved writers is that they, like politicians, had the illusion of destiny that allowed them to overcome obstacles no matter how nominal their work.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“This infantile sense of order tended to infect my life at large. Up at 5:30 a.m., coffee, oatmeal, perhaps sausage (homemade), and fresh eggs giving one of the yolks to Lola. Listening to NPR and grieving more recently over the absence of Bob Edwards who was the sound of morning as surely as birds. Reading a paragraph or two of Emerson or Loren Eiseley to raise the level of my thinking. Going out to feed the cattle if it was during our six months of bad weather.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“My dissipating thoughts of life in terms of victory or defeat came along willy nilly from a culture that pretended that life was far more solid than it actually was. The edges were actually blurred and moved along with the infinitely variable shape of a river.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“I told Robert when he came home for Christmas that I’d rather he be gay than a Republican.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“We English majors of a serious bent are susceptible to high ideals we paste on our lives like decals.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“Yours is an American story. You lose your life’s long term substance, your wife and farm and dog. You are cut loose. At your age you can’t think of new worlds to conquer or big deal adventures in far flung places. The only real adventure in most people’s life is adultery.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“Time tricks us into thinking we’re part of her and then leaves us behind.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“They were that new kind of Democrat that didn’t seem to know any working people.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“We were always an army of occupation. You know that if you read history.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“I'd rather get a brain tumor than go back to teaching.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“Keats wrote, "When I have fears that I may cease to be before my pen had gleaned my teeming brain..." That was throwing the raw meat on the floor in a lovely way.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“She modestly turned her back when she slipped on her clothes and I got the best view yet of her flexed buttocks which would win the Olympics if they had sense enough to have a best butt competition.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“Once when we were after pan fish on a small local lake and saw and heard a loon dad upset me by saying that each loon contains the soul of a pretty girl who died young. I was in tears and he reassured me that they would prefer to live within a loon and fly south every year rather than grow up and marry some dumb farmer.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“After it happened I recalled reading Henry Miller in college where he said, “I came off like a whale.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“The world is a wobbly place and so is my mind.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major

“Dad said I would always be “high minded and low waged” from reading too much Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe he was right.”
― Jim Harrison, The English Major