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Montana Quotes

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Montana Quotes

“But until then, and right now, the sun is bright, the air is cool, my head is clear, there’s a whole day ahead of us, we’re almost to the mountains, it’s a good day to be alive. It’s this thinner air that does it. You always feel like this when you start getting into higher altitudes.”

“Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow. But of course, without the top you can’t have any sides. It’s the top that defines the sides. So on we go—we have a long way—no hurry—just one step after the next—with a little Chautauqua for entertainment -- .Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it’s a shame more people don’t switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant but it never is.”

“I want to talk about another kind of high country now in the world of thought, which in some ways, for me at least, seems to parallel or produce feelings similar to this, and call it the high country of the mind. If all of human knowledge, everything that’s known, is believed to be an enormous hierarchic structure, then the high country of the mind is found at the uppermost reaches of this structure in the most general, the most abstract considerations of all. Few people travel here. There’s no real profit to be made from wandering through it, yet like this high country of the material world all around us, it has its own austere beauty that to some people makes the hardships of traveling through it seem worthwhile. In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty, and to the enormous magnitude of questions asked, and to the answers proposed to these questions. The sweep goes on and on and on so obviously much further than the mind can grasp one hesitates even to go near for fear of getting lost in them and never finding one’s way out.”

“In Montana summers, anything feels possible. Grassy green pastures stretch for miles with the yellow field of canola flowering in late June, contrasting the deep blue skies. Billowing gold castles of clouds tower overhead, subsiding late into the late before the shower of stars began to emerge. Spotted fawns nurse from their mothers while flights of hummingbirds dive and skitter thought the aspen groves in search of nectar. The summers, a rich bounty after having lasted the many months of winter, are magical but brief.”

“Hank Knight asked questions about Jesse Rose and an item that was taken from her crib the night she was kidnapped. His questions led our lawyer to believe Hank had knowledge about the crime and possibly where Jesse Rose is now. I think he got too close to the truth. Too close to the kidnapper's accomplice. And if I'm right then you can help me prove it.”

“We'll ride along the river. It's a mighty pretty sight..." Puffy white clouds floated across the azure blue sky. Pine-covered mountains crowned with snowcaps folded down into foothills that ringed the valley. Beneath the clouds the play of sun and shadow cast hazy blue-green patches on the mountainsides. A distant large-winged bird rode on air currents before diving into a clump of trees.”

“I didn't mean to upset you, Ms. Hamilton," his gaze shifted back to her. "It's a beautiful sight and I thought you'd like to see it." She gasped in delight at the vista before her. Distant purple mountains framed lush green meadows speckled with brown dots of cattle. A silver river threaded through clumps of trees. In the middle of the valley, ranch buildings clustered around a large white house. Elizabeth inhaled crisp air into her lungs...”

“Her moral obligation to keep our hearts entwined. Her preeminent love, smelling like life, in a good way, familiar like an ancient woodcut, a private postcard in the midst of a crowd, in an old T-shirt to soak up the memories, committed to recycling life. repairing the nucleus.”

“Inevitable pickup trucks complete with full gun racks, chainsaws, fishing poles, and big, sneering dogs in the back, line the streets and parking lots. Meek murmur of autumn skies, Ford and Chevy outfits to roll through town, as people get ready for a long, gray, foggy winter, big, four-wheel-drive pickups with snow blades attached, the box loaded down, with a high stack of cordwood topped by a huge elk carcass, to go disheartened in the midst of wretched weather, cold, raw, continually snowing.”

“The snow in the mountains had changed everything. Frank swore as he listened on the phone to the head of search and rescue describing the conditions they'd run into on the other side of the Crazies. "The terrain is too dangerous," Jim Martin said. "Even experienced ground crews found many areas too difficult to traverse with the snow." "What about the searchers in the helicopters?" "They should be able to see tracks in the snow once the clouds life." Jim didn't sound optimistic. "The storm isn't moving on as fast as the weatherman predicted.”

“Fly fishing is not a braggers game. There’s no glory to win. No competition or comparison between humans. It’s not about growing ego, but removing it. No fish will provide this lesson. It must come from the conscience of the angler. In the most simple explanation, fly fishing is an introspective quest to tame one’s own mind. This can be shared with others, but only discovered alone.”

“Granddad always said the best things about fishing were beyond the senses. He said the mountains, rivers and fish were the center of why you were there, but not the heart, that the heart was in those pure moments in and around the fishing, or rather what was on the other side of those moments that can only be felt, not told because words were not up to the job. That’s what hooked your soul.”

“Correct spelling, correct punctuation, correct grammar. Hundreds of rules for itsy-bitsy people. No one could remember all that stuff and concentrate on what he was trying to write about. It was all table manners, not derived from any sense of kindness or decency or humanity, but originally from an egotistic desire to look like gentlemen and ladies. Gentlemen and ladies had good table manners and spoke and wrote grammatically. It was what identified one with the upper classes. In Montana, however, it didn’t have this effect at all. It identified one, instead, as a stuck-up Eastern ass.”

“Zane," she moaned. "Please touch me." "I will. I'm going to touch every inch of you until I know what makes you sigh and what makes you giggle and what makes you beg me to never stop. I'm going to make you shudder and scream so that long after tonight you'll remember the feel of my hands and exactly where they were on your body." "I'm going to die if you don't get on with it.”

“Slacker had come into the language as a term of frequent use. Bundles of Hearst newspapers had been burned in Times Square because Hearst was slow in swinging to the Allied cause but in a few weeks he had swung, and American flags were printed all over his daily sheets. So-called pro-Germans were being tarred and feathered by mobs in the West. Frank Little of the I.W.W. executive board had been lynched by business men in Butte, Montana. And new and appalling tales of cruelty to conscientious objectors were coming out of the prisons where they were confined.”