Norman Maclean Quotes

Quotes about:

• Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.

  Norman Maclean

  Love, Inspirational, God

  131 Copy quote

• Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

  Norman Maclean

  Running, Time, Rain

  "A River Runs Through It" (1976)

  89 Copy quote

• All good things come by grace, and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy.

  Norman Maclean

  Art, Fishing, Grace

  Norman Maclean (2009). “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition”, p.4, University of Chicago Press

  76 Copy quote

• 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

  Brother, Father, Sea

  Norman Maclean, Barry Moser (1989). “A River Runs Through It”, p.1, University of Chicago Press

  83 Copy quote

• At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us. You can love completely without complete understanding.

  Norman Maclean

  Love, Elude You, Elude Us

  70 Copy quote

• 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

  Fishing, Perfect, Waiting

  Norman Maclean (2009). “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition”, p.37, University of Chicago Press

  64 Copy quote

• 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

  Brother, Loneliness, Haunting

  68 Copy quote

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

  Norman Maclean

  Numbers, Montana, World

  53 Copy quote

• Poets talk about "spots of time", but it is really the fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone.

  Norman Maclean

  Fishing, Gone, World

  Norman Maclean, Barry Moser (1989). “A River Runs Through It”, p.70, University of Chicago Press

  53 Copy quote

• Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.

  Norman Maclean

  Running, Fishing, Rivers

  "A River Runs Through It" (1976)

  494 Copy quote

• I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature—not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.

  Norman Maclean

  Mean, Long, Luck

  Norman Maclean (2009). “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition”, p.127, University of Chicago Press

  66 Copy quote

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

  Norman Maclean

  Fishing, World, Fly Fishing

  Norman Maclean (2009). “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition”, p.18, University of Chicago Press

  44 Copy quote

• At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.

  Norman Maclean

  Elude You, Elude Us, Sunrise

  Norman Maclean, Barry Moser (1989). “A River Runs Through It”, p.45, University of Chicago Press

  224 Copy quote

• We can love completely what we cannot completely understand.

  Norman Maclean

  46 Copy quote

• The nearest anyone can come to finding himself at any given age is to find a story that somehow tells him about himself.

  Norman Maclean

  Age, Stories, Given

  Norman Maclean (2010). “Young Men and Fire”, p.145, University of Chicago Press

  43 Copy quote

• Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

  Norman Maclean

  Summer, Memories, Thinking

  Norman Maclean, Barry Moser (1989). “A River Runs Through It”, p.161, University of Chicago Press

  38 Copy quote

• 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

  Giving, Helping, Wanted

  Norman Maclean (2009). “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition”, p.81, University of Chicago Press

  37 Copy quote

• When exhausted and feeling sorry for yourself, at least change your socks.

  Norman Maclean

  Sorry, Feelings, Exhausted

  35 Copy quote

• 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

  Gratitude, Biblical, Compassion

  Norman Maclean (2017). “Young Men and Fire: Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition”, p.7, University of Chicago Press

  34 Copy quote

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

  Norman Maclean

  Rivers, Water, Environmental

  Norman Maclean, Barry Moser (1989). “A River Runs Through It”, p.158, University of Chicago Press

  43 Copy quote

• 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

  Beautiful, Watches, Floating

  Norman Maclean, Barry Moser (1989). “A River Runs Through It”, p.68, University of Chicago Press

  15 Copy quote

• It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.

  Norman Maclean

  Friendship, Elude Us, Elude You

  Norman Maclean (2009). “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition”, p.104, University of Chicago Press

  66 Copy quote

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

  Norman Maclean

  Book, Rivers, Stories

  Norman Maclean (2009). “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition”, p.63, University of Chicago Press

  27 Copy quote

• I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched. On the river the heat mirages danced with each other and then they danced through each other and then they joined hands and danced around each other. Eventually the water joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.

  Norman Maclean

  Believe, Hands, Rivers

  Norman Maclean (2009). “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition”, p.61, University of Chicago Press

  20 Copy quote

• Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

  Norman Maclean

  Death, Young, Reach Out

  Norman Maclean, Barry Moser (1989). “A River Runs Through It”, p.161, University of Chicago Press

  8 Copy quote

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