quotes:
1. When we were silent we could hear the needles falling like dry leaves. Suddenly the needles stopped. “I should leave Montana,” he [Paul] said. “I should go to the West Coast.”
I had thought that, too, but I asked, “Why?”
“Here,” he said, “I cover local sports and personal items and the police blotter. I don’t have anything to do. Here I will never have anything to do.”
“Except hunt and fish,” I told him.
“And get into trouble,” he added. (57)
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2. As the heat mirages on the river in front of me danced with and through each other, I could feel patterns from m own life joining with them. It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. But I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water. And I sensed that ahead I would meet something that would never erode so there would be a sharp turn, deep circles, a deposit, and quietness.
The fisherman even has a phrase to describe what he does when he studies the pattern of a river. He says he is “reading the water,” and perhaps to tell his stories he has to do much the same thing. Then one of his biggest problems is to decide where and at what time of day life lies ready to be taken as a joke. And to guess whether it is going to be a little or a big joke.
For all of us, though, it is much easier to read the waters of tragedy (63-64)
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3. He knew I was being blamed for Neal, and he may well have thought my marriage was breaking up. He had heard me called a bastard, and he was out of the house when I and the three Scottish women publicly declared our love for each other, given the restrictions that Scots put on such public declarations. Actually, I was feeling lordly with love and several times broke into laughter that I can’t explain otherwise, but he could have thought I was trying to be brave about having made a mess of my life. I don’t really know what he thought, but he was as tender as I usually tried to be to him. (78)
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4. “Help,” he said, “is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.
“So it is,” he said, using an old homiletic transition, “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.” (81)
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5. They weren’t the biggest or most spectacular fish I ever caught, but they were three fish I caught because my brother waded across the river to give the fly that would catch them and because they were the last fish I ever caught fishing with him. (94)
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6. Then he told me, “In the part I was reading it says the Word was in the beginning, and that’s right. I used to think water was first, but if you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water.”
“That’s because you are a preacher first and then a fisherman,” I told him. “If you ask Paul, he will tell you the words are formed out of water.”
“No,” my father said, “you are not listening carefully. The water runs over the words. Paul will tell you the same thing.” (95-96)
[In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1]
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7. “He is beautiful,” my father said. . .(100)
At the end of this day, then, I remember him both as a distant abstraction in artistry and as a closeup in water and laughter. (101)
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8. A river, though, has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us. As we were packing our tackle and fish in the car, Paul repeated, “Just give me three more years.” At the time, I was surprised at the repetition, but later I realized that the river somewhere, sometime, must have told me, too, that he would receive no such gift. (102)
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9. “If you push me far enough, all I really know is that he was a fine fisherman.”
“You know more than that,” my father said. “He was beautiful.”
“Yes,” I said, “he was beautiful. He should have been--you taught him.” (103)
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10. “After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don’t you make up a story and the people to go with it?
“Only then will you understand what happened and why.” (104)
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11. 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.