Richard Brautigan - Trout Fishing in America (1967)

29 Sourced Quotes

View all Richard Brautigan Quotes
In a Cafe" I watched a man in a cafe fold a slice of bread as if he were folding a birth certificate or looking at the photograph of a dead lover.

Richard Brautigan
I believe I saw a woodcock. He had a long bill like putting a fire hydrant into a pencil sharpener, then pasting it onto a bird and letting the bird fly away in front of me with this thing on its face for no other purpose than to amaze me.

Richard Brautigan
I fished upstream coming ever closer and closer to the narrow staircase of the canyon. Then I went up into it as if I were entering a department store. I caught three trout in the lost and found department.

Richard Brautigan
Language does not leave fossils, at least not until it has become written.

Richard Brautigan
He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky and then from the whores of New Orleans.

Richard Brautigan
If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer. That is my name.

Richard Brautigan
Everything smelled of sheep. The dandelions were suddenly more sheep than flower, each petal reflecting wool and the sound of a bell ringing off the yellow. But the thing that smelled the most like sheep, was the sun itself. When the sun went behind a cloud, the smell of sheep decreased, like standing on some old guy's hearing aid, and when the sun came back again, the smell of the sheep was loud, like a clap of thunder inside a cup of coffee.

Richard Brautigan
He created his own Kool Aid reality and was able to illuminate himself by it.

Richard Brautigan
... the Coleman lantern is the symbol of the camping craze that is currently sweeping America, with its unholy white light burning in the forests of America.

Richard Brautigan
The heart is something else. Nobody knows what's going to happen,' I said

Richard Brautigan
Gee, You're so Beautiful That It's Starting to Rain Oh, Marcia, I want your long blonde beauty to be taught in high school, so kids will learn that God lives like music in the skin and sounds like a sunshine harpsicord. I want high school report cards to look like this: Playing with Gentle Glass Things A Computer Magic A Writing Letters to Those You Love A Finding out about Fish A Marcia's Long Blonde Beauty A+!

Richard Brautigan
Boo, Forever Spinning like a ghost on the bottom of a top, I'm haunted by all the space that I will live without you.

Richard Brautigan
Love Poem ـــــــــ It's so nice to wake up in the morning all alone and not have to tell somebody you love them when you don't love them any more.

Richard Brautigan
Because you always have a clock strapped to your body, it's natural that i should think of you as the correct time: with your long blonde hair at 8:03, and your pulse-lightning breasts at 11:17, and your rose-meow smile at 5:30, i know i'm right.

Richard Brautigan
I had a good-talking candle last night in my bedroom. I was very tired but I wanted somebody to be with me, so I lit a candle and listened to its comfortable voice of light until I was asleep.

Richard Brautigan
Karma Repair Kit Items 1-4. 1.Get enough food to eat, and eat it. 2.Find a place to sleep where it is quiet, and sleep there. 3.Reduce intellectual and emotional noise until you arrive at the silence of yourself, and listen to it.

Richard Brautigan
You've got some 'Star-Spangled' nails in your coffin, kid. That's what they've done for you, son.

Richard Brautigan
I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them.

Richard Brautigan
In Watermelon Sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar.

Richard Brautigan
Burn all the maps to your body. I'm not here of my own choosing.

Richard Brautigan
I'll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.

Richard Brautigan
I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.

Richard Brautigan
There are seductions that should be in the Smithsonian Institute, right next to The Spirit of St. Louis.

Richard Brautigan
A Boat O beautiful was the werewolf in his evil forest. We took him to the carnival and he started crying when he saw the Ferris wheel. Electric green and red tears flowed down his furry cheeks. He looked like a boat out on the dark water.

Richard Brautigan
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster When you take your pill it's like a mine disaster. I think of all the people lost inside you.

Richard Brautigan
We looked like a parade barely moving toward YOU MIGHT GET LOST.

Richard Brautigan
I saw thousands of pumpkins last night come floating in on the tide, bumping up against the rocks and rolling up on the beaches; it must be Halloween in the sea

Richard Brautigan
The bookstore was a parking lot for used graveyards. Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars. Most of the books were out of print, and no one wanted to read them any more and the people who had read the books had died or forgotten about them, but through the organic process of music the books had become virgins again.

Richard Brautigan
Excuse me, I said. I thought you were a trout stream. I'm not, she said.

Richard Brautigan