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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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