Will Harrison
Will Harrison
nurse world woods
The world that used to nurse us now keeps shouting inane instructions. That's why I ran to the woods.
world crafts defense
That's my only defense against this world: to build a sentence out of it.
morning coffee reading
This infantile sense of order tended to infect my life at large. Up at 5:30 a.m., coffee, oatmeal, perhaps sausage (homemade), and fresh eggs giving one of the yolks to Lola. Listening to NPR and grieving more recently over the absence of Bob Edwards who was the sound of morning as surely as birds. Reading a paragraph or two of Emerson or Loren Eiseley to raise the level of my thinking. Going out to feed the cattle if it was during our six months of bad weather.
marriage cooking together
Marriage is survived just on the basis of ordinary etiquette, day in and day out. Also cooking together helps a lot.
encouraging hands soul
No one else can hold your hand or take this voyage of the soul for you.
writing would-be literature
I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was.
dog forget seven
It is easy to forget that in the main we die only seven times more slowly than our dogs.
destiny trying stories
As an English major I was familiar with the stories of dozens of writers trying to get their work done among the multifarious diversions of the world and the hurdles of their own vices. A professor had said that what saved writers is that they, like politicians, had the illusion of destiny that allowed them to overcome obstacles no matter how nominal their work.
love disappointment tired
I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.
fishing tennis balls
Fishing tournaments seem a little like playing tennis with living balls...
running teaching writing
I couldn't run a tight schedule, and if you're any good at teaching, you get sucked dry because you like your students and you're trying to help them, but you don't have any time left to write yourself.
teaching ruins literature
I had let my digust with teaching ruin my love of literature.
government years people
Suits obviously had helped to promote bad government and he was as guilty as anyone for wearing them so steadfastly for twenty years. Of late he had become frightened of the government for the first time in his life, the way the structure of democracy had begun debasing people rather than enlivening them in their mutual concern. The structure was no longer concerned with the purpose for which it was designed, and a small part of the cause, Nordstrom thought, was probably that all politicians and bureaucrats wore suits.
congratulations success-and-money
Success and money can really be quite blinding.