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Dalva QUOTES

Dalva QUOTES

1 " By not letting places be themselves we show our contempt for them. We bury them in sentiment, then suffocate them to death in one way or another. I can ruin both the desert and the Museum of Modern Art in New York by carrying to them an insufferable load of distinctions that disallows actually seeing the flora and fauna or the paintings. Children are usually better at finding mushrooms and arrowheads because they are either ignorant of or unwilling to carry the load. "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

2 " I was on the verge of jumping into one of those holes in life out of which we emerge a bit tattered and bloody, though we remain sure nonetheless that we had to make the jump. "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

3 " the natural world seemed to absorb the poison in me. "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

4 " How could all this happen when there was an ocean? "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

5 " There is the question of whether life is long enough to get over anything. I sat down on the ground to avoid tipping over from the enormity of it all. "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

6 " There is a spine of goofiness in America that has never been deterred by literacy "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

7 " I began walking at your age just because the natural world seemed to absorb the poison in me. "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

8 " It was today—rather yesterday I think—that he told me it was important not to accept life as a brutal approximation. "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

9 " Earlier, when I made my coffee (after releasing my grateful geese), I sat at the big Northridge desk and got out the Edward Curtis portfolio for breakfast reading. When I untied the first folio there was a note—“Dalva & Ruth. Wash your hands. I love you. Grandpa.” A simple old note, brittle with age, but I was momentarily overcome with loneliness for her; at the same time, though, I knew in a deeper sense that I was totally out of the running. In the long and short of it, love is a more difficult subject than sex. Or history. I "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

10 " I never met a normal person and neither have you. "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

11 " people have an instinct to be useful and can’t handle the relentless everydayness of life unless they work hard. It is sheer idleness that deadens the soul and causes neuroses. "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

12 " was a little embarrassed after I dressed and sat down to review my schoolwork. She had a large tumbler of imported sherry and poured me a small glass. The Jerez sherry was an indulgence she had learned during the two years she had lived in Barcelona and Ibiza. She pushed the schoolwork aside and started to talk, more a slangish monologue than a lecture: “I certainly don’t believe that story about you screwing a pheasant-hunter but that’s your business, and right now it should matter to no one except you. You’re going to have a hard time, because you are lovely and your body is as fine as I’ve seen.” I objected to this as ugly and irrelevant but she went on: “You have to study extremely hard and find some subject or profession you’re obsessed with because in our culture it has been very hard on the attractive women I know. They are leered at, teased, abused, set on a pedestal, and no one takes them seriously, so you have to use all your energies to develop "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

13 " While it is a truism that man has not learned much more than the sexual act, and that fire burns when you stick your hand into it, it behooves the scholar to immerse himself in the analyses of the problem, rather than the problem itself. One "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

14 " I found a stock tank and let the horse drink, then tethered it and lifted the dog over the edge and watched it swim in happy circles. I got pretty wet lifting the dog out of the tank but didn't care -- there is something about doing a favor for a dog that calms you down. "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva

15 " I caught myself being drawn ceaselessly back into a past that I wished mightily to emerge from -- I had come to know only recently that one *could* emerge without forgetting, and that to remember need not be to suffocate. "

― Jim Harrison , Dalva