Norman Maclean
Norman Maclean
Norman Fitzroy Macleanwas an American author and scholar noted for his books A River Runs Through It and Other Storiesand Young Men and Fire...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth23 December 1902
CountryUnited States of America
elude-us elude-you sunrise
At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.
brother father sea
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.
fishing perfect waiting
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
running time rain
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.
fishing lines our-family
In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.
fishing world fly-fishing
One great thing about fly fishing is that after a while nothing exists of the world but thoughts about fly fishing
literature now-and-then made
...life every now and then becomes literature...as if life had been made and not happened.
beautiful ashes becoming
One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful even if it is only a floating ash.
fishing gone world
Poets talk about "spots of time", but it is really the fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone.
giving helping needed
So it is that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed.
age stories given
The nearest anyone can come to finding himself at any given age is to find a story that somehow tells him about himself.
volunteer helping mystery
A mystery of the universe is how it has managed to survive with so much volunteer help.
rivers water hard
A river, though, has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us.
death young reach-out
Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.