Literature is the ditch I'm going to die in. It's still the thing I care most about.

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

Giving freaks a pass is the oldest tradition in Montana.

Young anglers love new rivers the way they love the rest of their lives. Time does not seem to be of the essence and somewhere in the system is what they are looking for.

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

The essence of sport is courage.

To me, no painter has ever quite understood the light, the distances, the aboriginal ghostliness of the American West as well as Maynard Dixon. The great mood of his work is solitude, the effect of land and space on people. While his work stands perfectly well on its claims to beauty, it offers a spiritual view of the West indispensable to anyone who would understand it.