Norman Maclean A River Runs Through It Quotes

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. ~ Norman Maclean

On the Big Blackfoot River above the mouth of Belmont Creek the banks are fringed by large Ponderosa pines. In the slanting sun of late afternoon the shadows of great branches reached from across the river, and the trees took the river in their arms. The shadows continued up the bank, until they included us ~ Norman Maclean

What a beautiful world it was once. At least a river of it was. ~ Norman Maclean

A river, though, has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us. ~ Norman Maclean

I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched ... Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.
Even the anatomy of a river was laid bare. Not far downstream was a dry channel where the river had run once, and part of the way to come to know a thing is through its death. But years ago I had known the river when it flowed through this now dry channel, so I could enliven its stony remains with the waters of memory. ~ Norman Maclean

I hope there are others also who don't mind trees. ~ Norman Maclean

At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear. ~ Norman Maclean

The world is full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula, Montana. ~ Norman Maclean

When exhausted and feeling sorry for yourself, at least change your socks. ~ Norman Maclean

Power comes not from power everywhere, but from knowing where to put it on. ~ Norman Maclean

At the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. ~ Norman Maclean

It is not fly fishing if you are not looking for answers to questions. ~ Norman Maclean

We can love completely what we cannot completely understand. ~ Norman Maclean

How can a question be answered that asks a lifetime of questions. ~ Norman Maclean

If our father had had his way, nobody who did not know
how to fish would be allowed to disgrace a fish by catching him. ~ Norman Maclean

They were still so young they hadn't learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy. ~ Norman Maclean

A mystery of the universe is how it has managed to survive with so much volunteer help. ~ Norman Maclean

Help is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly. ~ Norman Maclean

It doesn't take much in the way of body and mind to be a lookout.....It's mostly soul ~ Philip Connors Quoting Norman Maclean

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. ~ Norman Maclean

That's how you know when you have thought too much-- when you become a dialogue between You'll probably lose and You're sure to lose. ~ Norman Maclean

The hardest thing usually to leave behind, as was the case now, can loosely be called the conscience. ~ Norman Maclean

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. ~ Norman Maclean

Although I have never pretended to be a great fisherman, it was always important to me that I was a fisherman and looked like one, especially when fishing with my brother. ~ Norman Maclean

Many of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect ~ Norman Maclean

I tried to find something I already knew about life that might help me reach out and touch my brother and get him to look at me and himself. ~ Norman Maclean

Nobody," he said, "has put in a good day's fishing unless he leaves a couple of flies hanging on the bushes. You can't catch fish if you don't dare go where they are." "Let ~ Norman Maclean

The most sublime of oddballs, Leonardo da Vinci ~ Norman Maclean

It is a strange and wonderful and somewhat embarrassing feeling to hold someone in your arms who is trying to detach you from the earth and you aren't good enough to follow her. ~ Norman Maclean

Perhaps we always wondered which of us was tougher, but, if boyhood questions aren't answered before a certain point in time, they can't ever be raised again. So we returned to being gracious to each other, as the wall ~ Norman Maclean

One great thing about fly fishing is that after a while nothing exists of the world but thoughts about fly fishing ~ Norman Maclean

Life every now and then becomes literature ... as if life had been made and not happened. ~ Norman Maclean

All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something that isn't even visible. ~ Norman Maclean

When I was young, a teacher had forbidden me to say "more perfect" because she said if a thing is perfect it can't be more so. But by now I had seen enough of life to have regained my confidence in it. ~ Norman Maclean

The Hocking River moves like a flowing arm away from the Ohio River runs through towns as though it's chasing its own freedom, the same way the Ohio runs north from Virginia until it's safely away from the South. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

For a scientist, this is a good way to live and die, maybe the ideal way for any of us - excitedly finding we were wrong and excitedly waiting for tomorrow to come so we can start over. ~ Norman Maclean

To others in my family, the dog was something of a sacred object that had prolonged my father's life and helped to steady the rest of us. He was a fine dog, and after him, my father had no other dog. ~ Norman Maclean

Ahead and to the west was our ranger station - and the mountains of Idaho, poems of geology stretching beyond any boundaries and seemingly even beyond the world. ~ Norman Maclean

As for my father, I never knew whether he believed God was a mathematician but he certainly believed God could count and that only by picking up God's rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty. Unlike many Presbyterians, he often used the word beautiful. ~ Norman Maclean

Our eyes met and I felt a surprising ripple of pleasure run through me. ~ Julianne MacLean

It was a pretty rough neighborhood where I grew up The really tough places were over around Third Avenue where it ran into the Harlem River, but we weren't far away. ~ Norman Rockwell

Well, until man is redeemed he will always take a fly rod too far back, just as natural man always overswings with an ax or golf club and loses all his power somewhere in the air; only with a rod it's worse, because the fly often comes so far back it gets caught behind in a bush or rock. ~ Norman Maclean

Probably most catastrophes end this way without an ending, the dead not even knowing how they died ... ,those who loved them forever questioning "this unnecessary death," and the rest of us tiring of this inconsolable catastrophe and turning to the next one. ~ Norman Maclean

Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as "our brother's keepers," possessed of one of the oldest and possible one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting instincts. It will not let us go. ~ Norman Maclean

Few experiences can match the heady pleasure of trailing one's hand gently through the cool smoothness of water, of feeling the surging movement, the gentle increase of pressure and caress between the fingers with each pull of the oars. ~ Norman Thelwell

So it is that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed. ~ Norman Maclean

If he comes back," she nodded. I thought I saw tears in her eyes but I was mistaken. In all my life, I was never to see her cry. And also he was never to come back. Without interrupting each other, we both said at the same time, "Let's never get out of touch with each other." And we never have, although her death has come between us. ~ Norman Maclean

The river runs through the heart of the city, and braiding around and over and under the river, the city's rail system is a welter of tarnished silver ribbons. ~ Sarah Monette

Far back in the impulses to find this story is a storyteller's belief that at times life takes on the shape of art and that the remembered remnants of these moments are largely what we come to mean by life. The short semihumours comedies we live, our long certain tragedies, and our springtime lyrics and limericks make up most of what we are. they become almost all of what we remember of ourselves. ~ Norman Maclean

I do not traditionally speak ill of women, but your governess is a cabbagehead ~ Sarah MacLean

If you have to cross a river, you shall cross the river! Through swimming, through a raft, through walking, through any way possible, you shall cross it! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

The kundalini runs through you. It runs through the ida and the pingala, the two nerve channels in the subtle body; but there's a central channel, the shushumna, which is blocked. When it runs through that, then you can use the mystical kundalini. ~ Frederick Lenz

I'm a grandmother with dogs and nice friends here in the Rocky mountains. Ever see the movie A River Runs Through It? That's where I live. It's beautiful, no two ways about it. ~ Margot Kidder

He nodded. I no longer focus on meeting their expectations because I am too focused on outdoing hers. ~ Sarah MacLean

The raft was seized, with a noise like needles knitting, and we were hemmed in for winter -- river and the old channel's oxbow lake having frozen solid. By now, we guessed we were not two ordinary river travelers...it must have been the river that was extraordinary: a marvel that protected us by the same mysterious action that had given a common horse wings and changed a woman into a laurel tree. ~ Norman Lock

The Carmel is a lovely little river. It isn't very long but in its course it has everything a river should have. It ... tumbles down a while, runs through shallows, ... crackles among round boulders, wanders lazily under sycamores, spills into pools where trout live ... In the winter, it becomes a torrent, ... and in the summer it is a place for children to wade in and for fishermen to wander in. ~ John Steinbeck

Never doubt how beautiful you are, Callie. For your beauty has quite ruined me for all others. And, frankly, I rather wish I'd found you years ago. ~ Sarah MacLean

And as the bullet ripped through his flesh, Ralston was consumed by a single thought: I never told her that I loved her. ~ Sarah MacLean

Boring heroines are, in my opinion, the most common romance mistake. We loathe hanging out with women who define themselves purely through their relationships ... why would we want to read about them? ~ Sarah MacLean

When given the opportunity, Society will happily cannibalize itself. ~ Sarah MacLean

Breathless waltzes have only ever led girls into trouble. ~ Sarah MacLean

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman. ~ Norman Maclean

Marriage, was, after all, the most critical business in Britain. ~ Sarah MacLean

Men are not nearly as evolved as women are, nor as intelligent, evidently ~ Sarah MacLean

A terrified rat will swear to anything. ~ Alistair MacLean

His unashamed, avenging queen. ~ Sarah MacLean

Ah, but then I would be a widow. No one insults widows. ~ Sarah MacLean

As I get considerably beyond the biblical allotment of three score years and ten, I feel with increasing intensity that I can express my gratitude for still being around on the oxygen-side of the earth's crust only by not standing pat on what I have hitherto known and loved. While oxygen lasts, there are still new things to love, especially if compassion is a form of love. ~ Norman Maclean

I, for one, have no interest at all in having my heart stolen. ~ Sarah MacLean

When in doubt, bluff. ~ Sarah MacLean

The truth always did write well. ~ Sarah MacLean

It appears we have found a woman who does not consider you so irresistible. Nick ~ Sarah MacLean

If we don't take risks in life, the price can sometimes be far higher. ~ Charles Maclean

sometimes when he touches me . i feel as though all my sins have been forgiven. ~ Julianne MacLean

Help," he said, "is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly. "So it is," he said, using an old homiletic transition, "that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed. It is like the auto-supply shop over town where they always say, 'Sorry, we are just out of that part. ~ Norman Maclean

Philip looked at him for ~ Alex MacLean

Fury lends itself to fearlessness ~ Sarah MacLean

Sometimes, love was not enough. ~ Sarah MacLean

Sad was such a simple, damaging word. It meant so much more than its elaborate cousins. ~ Sarah MacLean

Even if that is so, there will remain A word wakened by lips that perish, A tireless messenger who runs and runs Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, And calls out, protests, screams. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

The compulsive talker must go through the herculean transformation of learning to quit or must become a great monologuist. ~ Norman Mailer

Aren't we all victims of fate? ~ Sarah MacLean

Violence and sex were two sides of the same coin, were they not? ~ Sarah MacLean

Loathing was so often described as cold; today, it felt hot as the sun. ~ Sarah MacLean

The first thing I noticed was the gun in his hands, and it wasn't the sort of gun a beginner carries around with him. A big dull black German Mauser 7.63. One of those economical guns; the bullet goes clear through three people at once. ~ Alistair MacLean

Everybody wants peace. That's a truism. There is no point in accomplishing through war what you can accomplish through peace. ~ Norman Finkelstein

Hope was a fool's emotion. ~ Sarah MacLean

Sometimes love is not enough. ~ Sarah MacLean

She told herself that she was happy to meet her executioner. ~ Sarah MacLean

Her touch became stronger, firmer, and he rewarded her skill with a low growl of pleasure. ~ Sarah MacLean

Alex smiled to herself. "I do like the sound of showing Gavin that I was right. ~ Sarah MacLean

We were discussing the fine puppetry of fate. ~ Sarah MacLean

Predicting correctly is the definition of wisdom. ~ Harry N. MacLean

You are better for every book you've read. ~ Sarah MacLean

Unfortunately, as anyone who has lived through a tragedy knows, life does, rather infuriatingly, go on. ~ G. Norman Lippert

Whether or not anybody had invented the category in his lifetime, Babe Ruth was surely the Greatest Living Yankee almost immediately upon lofting home runs at the Polo Grounds, allowing the Yankees to build their own palace across the Harlem River. ~ George Vecsey

She lifted one shoulder and lowered it. 'Because love is for 'lucky among us.
'What does that mean?' he said, her words rioting through him, unwelcome in their eerie truth.
'Only that I am not counted among the lucky. Everyone I have ever loved has left. ~ Sarah MacLean

Inheritance trumps inamorata. ~ Sarah MacLean

The God's been walking through our halls again: Brothers have been having visions. What's Vartra been saying to you? ~ Lisanne Norman

If only others knew that Lady Calpurnia Hartwell, proper, well-behaved spinster, entertained deep-seated and certainly unladylike thoughts about fictional heroes. ~ Sarah MacLean