An undisturbed river is as perfect as we will ever know, every refractive slide of cold water a glimpse of eternity.

I may be the wrong person for my life.

By your late thirties the ground has begun to grow hard. It grows harder and harder until the day that it admits you.

Fishing should be a ceremony that reaffirms our place in the natural world and helps us resist further estrangement from our origins.

We both liked children; we just didn't want any ourselves. There were children everywhere, and we saw no reason to start our own brand. Young couples plunge into parenthood and about half the time they end up with some ghastly problem on their hands. We thought we'd leave that to others.

Early on I decided that fishing would be my way of looking at the world. First it taught me to look at rivers. Lately it has been teaching me how to look at people, myself included.

It's funny, but... you're sort of a moving target for fortune, and you never know when it will befall you.