Daniel J. Rice Quotes

When I returned to camp, they walked behind me on the trail, and we spoke not a word about getting skunked today, but rather talked about the days we returned with a stringer full of fish, and how we filleted them and the left the guts out for bears and eagles, and how those fish tasted fresh when we fried them over a fire.

It occurred to me that no words by the tongue of man can express the simplicities of a quiet land, so I returned to the river.

If you have not touched the rocky wall of a canyon. If you have not heard a rushing river pound over cobblestones. If you have not seen a native trout rise in a crystalline pool beneath a shattering riffle, or a golden eagle spread its wings and cover you in shadow. If you have not seen the tree line recede to the top of a bare crested mountain. If you have not looked into a pair of wild eyes and seen your own reflection. Please, for the good of your soul, travel west.

I watched the surrounding landscape with great curiosity, and I wanted to discover the words that could describe all its unspoiled beauty.

The past and the future were starlight, seemingly so close, but forever out of reach.
Eli felt that starlight, the infinity of knowing nothing but his finite existence.

If you are lucky you will have the opportunity in your life to be owned by a good piece of land.

I was disoriented by the idea that men should ever leave the forest.

The contemplative man always lives alone. Regardless of who may reside in his home, his is a solitary world.

The mountains knew the definition of freedom. They provided a place where he could find his mind.

It has always been my understanding that truth and freedom can only exist in wild places.

There are places which exist in this world beyond the reach of imagination.

There was a wildness inside him; someday he would capture it. Not to be tamed, but to be released. For only by understanding his mind could it be freed.

This was going to be difficult, because he enjoyed women, but all the ones he has known seemed to be sent as secret assassins on a mission to destroy his pride and ability.

I walked slowly to enjoy this freedom, and when I came out of the mountains, I saw the sky over the prairie, and I thought that if heaven was real, I hoped it was a place I never had to go, for this earth was greater than any paradise.

Today I am an unemployed writer living as a recluse in the great Northwoods.

What man does not seek the power of his dreams, and believe in his ability to match the grace of his illusions.

Sometimes I feel like I'm losing my mind," she said with a hint
of sadness.
"You lost your mind a long time ago," he said seriously. She looked at him with indignation. "That's a compliment for anyone who knows the freedom and clarity of losing their mind," he reaffirmed her.

Only lost photographs that were never taken know what my mind speaks of when we are alone together.

My hands are flowing like sunlight. The shapes and colors are astounding. I don't understand these images that are empowering me. My brush touches the canvas like photons to the earth, and a new world develops, free from my control, yet intrinsically dependent upon me. I am sweating with elation. I have no idea what I am doing, or what it is my hands are trying to see. There is so much strength in this clarity I am overpowered by the independence of it.