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

...life every now and then becomes literature...as if life had been made and not happened.

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

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.

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.

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

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.