The Ancient Minstrel Quotes

“You can have a pretty good first line but not a strong enough thought to tag along more lines and sometimes in the middle words become bored and make war on one another. Notebooks are full of these fragments, shrapnel of our intention. Life is short on conclusions and that's why it's often a struggle to end a poem.”
― Jim Harrison, The Ancient Minstrel

“He had always thought that a Native American should have shot Robert Frost for the outrageous lie of the line “The land was ours before we were the land’s.” What a scandal that would be, America’s best-loved geezer falling in a battle over poetry.”
― Jim Harrison, The Ancient Minstrel: Novellas

“They merged again one evening sitting on the porch swing watching fireflies and the thousands of stars above them, idly moving the swing back and forth with their feet. The night was unbearably beautiful with the constellations speaking their own strange language to each other. He told her he thought it might be the uninvented language used by Jesus and the Buddha to speak to each other.”
― Jim Harrison, The Ancient Minstrel

“She awoke early and figured out the room coffeepot. She felt slowwitted and wondered if she was losing her mind, a concept she had always disagreed with. How could you lose your mind? It was always there though it could be in severe disrepair.”
― Jim Harrison, The Ancient Minstrel

“The thought was needlessly electric and he despised his sense of being out of control. It was still months away from New Year's when an effective resolution might be made.”
― Jim Harrison, The Ancient Minstrel

“The world gave one so many reasons to be pissed off at it.”
― Jim Harrison, The Ancient Minstrel: Novellas

“We’ve always lived rurally where it is much easier to avoid being bourgeois. The natural world draws you to herself with such power that you can easily ignore the rest of the culture and social obligations.”
― Jim Harrison, The Ancient Minstrel: Novellas

“damn the world and its wars, she thought. Those who start the wars never die in them. She packed hastily, had supper with Winnie”
― Jim Harrison, The Ancient Minstrel: Novellas

“His wife held him and they sat there an hour vomiting up their souls, saying everything that was possible to say about their multiple faults that had kept them apart. Finally they made love to the obnoxious music of mosquitoes on the wooden floor of the porch.”
― Jim Harrison, The Ancient Minstrel

“It didn't work to try to write about sex, doom, death, time, and the cosmos when you were thinking about a massive plate of spaghetti and meatballs.”
― Jim Harrison, The Ancient Minstrel

“Shakespeare and a very few others qualified but thousands and thousands of others dropped into the void without a sound.”
― Jim Harrison, The Ancient Minstrel: Novellas

“At heart he was a secret Quaker and football was pure violence. The coach was always telling him to “hit them harder.” The coach wanted him to put opposing players “out of commission.” He kept it to himself but wondered what the point of the “game” was if your intention was to hurt people badly.”
― Jim Harrison, The Ancient Minstrel: Novellas