Quotes from Trout Fishing in America

“I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“Excuse me, I said. I thought you were a trout stream.
I'm not, she said.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“He created his own Kool Aid reality and was able to illuminate himself by it.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“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, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky and then from the whores of New Orleans.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“I thought about it for awhile, hiding it from the rest of my mind. But I didn't ruin my birthday by secretly thinking about it too hard”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“USED TROUT STREAM FOR SALE.
MUST BE SEEN TO BE APPRECIATED.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“You're not fooling anyone by taking your clothes off when you go to bed.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“Now it was close to sunset and the earth was beginning to cool off in the manner of eternity and office girls were returning like penguins from Montgomery Street.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“After he graduated from college, he went to Paris and became an Existentialist. He had a photograph taken of Existentialism and himself sitting at a sidewalk cafe. Pard was wearing a beard and he looked as if he had a huge soul, with barely enough room in his body to contain it.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“I remember mistaking an old woman for a trout stream in Vermont, and I had to beg her pardon.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“The girl was very pretty and her body was like a clear mountain river of skin and muscle flowing over rocks of bone and hidden nerves.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word Mayonnaise.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“The old drunk told me about trout fishing. When he could talk, he had a way of describing trout as if they were a precious and intelligent metal.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“One spring afternoon as a child in the strange town of Portland, I walked down to a different street corner, and saw a row of old houses, huddled together like seals on a rock.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“We were all silent except for blink, blink, blink, blink, blink.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“he was leaving for America, often only a place in the mind.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“I walked home past the glass whiskers of the houses, reflecting the downward rushing waterfalls of night.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“My sperm came out into the water, unaccustomed to the light, and instantly it became a misty, stringy kind of thing and swirled out like a falling star, and I saw a dead fish come forward and float into my sperm, bending it in the middle.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“The fish was a twelve-inch rainbow trout with a huge hump on its back. A hunchback trout.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“Hello, sir. Yes...Uh-huh...Yes...You say that you want to bury your aunt with a Christmas tree in her coffin? Uh-huh...She wanted it that way...I'll see what I can do for you, sir. Oh, you have the measurements of the coffin with you? Very good...We have our coffin-sized Christmas trees right over here, sir.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“He created his own Kool-Aid reality and was able to illuminate himself by it.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammels and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

“It only made sense that drinking intelligent blood would make intelligent fleas.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America

About the author

Popular quotes

“Little things like time and generations don’t matter very much with good friends who are fond of each other’s company.”
― Ari Berk, quote from Death Watch

“And therefore education at the University mostly worked by the age-old method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of inns and taverns for exactly the same reason.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Interesting Times

“Fennik growled. "You mock me."
Korbyn's face was innocent, like Jidali's after he sneaked a cookie from Aunt Sabisa. "I would never mock such an illustrious personage," Korbyn said.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, quote from Vessel

“the most powerful mind is the quiet mind. It is the mind that is present, reflective, mindful of its thoughts and its state. It doesn’t often multitask, and when it does, it does so with a purpose.”
― Maria Konnikova, quote from Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“if he maintained that speed and went outside, the ship would appear to him as if it wasn’t moving at all since he would be moving at the same velocity. But going outside at a high velocity was risky. He’d expose himself to gamma radiation and the threat of micrometeoroids. Getting hit by a tiny rock particle would likely be fatal. Victor couldn’t take that risk. Not with so much at stake. It would”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Earth Unaware

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.