I have never seen a river that I could not love. Moving water... has a fascinating vitality. It has power and grace and associations. It has a thousand colors and a thousand shapes, yet it follows laws so definite that the tiniest streamlet is an exact replica of a great river.

I still don't know why I fish or why other men fish, except that we like it and it makes us think and feel.

A fisherman is always hopeful -- nearly always more hopeful than he has any right to be.

Perhaps fishing is, for me, only an excuse to be near rivers.

Our tradition is that of the first man who sneaked away to the creek when the tribe did not really need fish.

I remember the good evenings I have fished, even the ones that realised material hopes not by the fish that came to the fly, but by the colour and movement of the water and sky, by the sounds and scents and gentle stirrings that were all about me.

I have two hopes for the future. The first and lesser one is that game commissions will one day have sense enough to set limits that measurably reflect the sport safely available. The second and deeply urgent one is that we shall grow a race of sportsmen no one of whom will ever consider it a matter of pride to have killed a limit.