Ian Frazier Quotes

To me, a bag in a tree is like a flag of chaos, and when I remove it, I'm capturing the flag of the other side. In the end, it doesn't matter how ironic or serious or even effective on a larger scale bag snagging may be.

- Ian Frazier

A book tour is not a good opportunity to let your mind wander. You have to pay attention, remember salespeople's and interviewers' names, succinctly summarize your book in a 'selling' way, and so on.

- Ian Frazier

Everything in Russia is made of cement - phone booths, fence posts and light bulbs.

- Ian Frazier

When I needed to think or was really upset, generally I climbed a tree.

- Ian Frazier

When the days start to get shorter, I want to be in some nice brick building on the East Coast with the lights glowing in the windows. When the daylight starts changing, I want to be out West.

- Ian Frazier

Once, America's size in the imagination was limitless. After Europeans settled and changed it, working from the coasts inland, its size in the imagination shrank.

- Ian Frazier

I don't want to participate in traditional Indian religious ceremonies - dance in a sun dance or pray in a sweat lodge or go on a vision quest with the help of a medicine man. The power of these ceremonies has an appeal, but I'm content with what little religion I already have.

- Ian Frazier

When I go to Indian reservations in the West, and especially to the Pine Ridge Reservation, I sometimes feel unsure where to put my foot when I open the car door. The very ground is different from where I usually stand. There are fewer curbs, fewer sidewalks, and almost no street signs, mailboxes, or leashed dogs.

- Ian Frazier

With reporting, if you work hard, you can usually pull something out. But writing humor doesn't respond to working hard, necessarily. I mean, you could just sit there and look at the page all day and maybe something will come.

- Ian Frazier

I'm one of those people who happen to like trees. I don't know why - I just do. As a kid, I loved to climb them. The distant, upper branches, especially, were celestial and alluring.

- Ian Frazier

I don't want to collect Indian art, though pots and beadwork and blankets made by Indians remain the most beautiful art objects in the American West, in my opinion.

- Ian Frazier

America can enjoy a vital, fully functioning government, with all the benefits provided by Texas, while reducing Texas at the same time.

- Ian Frazier

I would hate to see the idea of freedom disappear, and I wonder if maybe it will.

- Ian Frazier

Words are charms. It's like a song you didn't even know you knew.

- Ian Frazier

America to me is so varied and exciting. I always feel nostalgia for the place I'm not in, and then I get there and find myself in a traffic jam going into the Lincoln Tunnel, and I think, 'God, why was I romanticizing this part of the country?' I think it has to do with the romantic, unrealistic temperament.

- Ian Frazier

Despite the obvious benefits, many Americans do not like Texas. Some even say they despise Texas, and make no secret of their feelings.

- Ian Frazier

Leading economists have shown that by shrinking Texas, we can actually create more income for Texas in the long run.

- Ian Frazier

On two or three book tours, I have visited bookstores in the Mall of America and signed copies of my books and introduced myself to store employees who I hope will sell them.

- Ian Frazier

I suppose anybody just losing it and sputtering curses is pretty funny. But I think it would be more of a challenge, much more of a challenge, to make a cursing dad funny.

- Ian Frazier

I think Indians dress better than anyone, but I don't want to imitate more than a detail or two; I prefer my clothes humdrum and inconspicuous, and a cowboy hat just doesn't work for me.

- Ian Frazier

Human connection is the way things work. It's like a patronage system. You know somebody, and he knows somebody, and he knows somebody, and he knows the district governor, and it's okay.

- Ian Frazier

You can find dozens of books about people taking the Trans-Siberian Railroad. I knew I had to do something different to cross Siberia. To drive and to talk with people along the way, that was how I wrote my book 'Great Plains'. I drove and camped in Siberia, but did not have a real program.

- Ian Frazier

There's an idea of the Plains as the middle of nowhere, something to be contemptuous of. But it's really a heroic place.

- Ian Frazier

I am an author, and like many in my profession, I am also a traveling salesman, going all over in an attempt to persuade people to spend twenty-five dollars on a hardcover book by me.

- Ian Frazier

Russians don't complain, usually.

- Ian Frazier

Russia has always had a global history. Global history is a bummer. You suffer invasions of all different kinds. And Russia was not defended against them.

- Ian Frazier

I'd read books in Russian, and they would take me forever. I wanted to write a book that would last and would not be superficial. Siberian-travel writing is its own genre.

- Ian Frazier

Russian humor is to adapt or make some sense or nonsense out of the insanity of their lives.

- Ian Frazier

People in Russia adapt to misery by a deep, deep humor.

- Ian Frazier

I was friends with Russians who said I should see Russia. I went there in '93 and it was so exciting, and I went to Siberia and had a great time.

- Ian Frazier

I don't have a disregard for my reader in humor pieces.

- Ian Frazier

I believe that when Crazy Horse was killed, something more than a man's life was snuffed out.

- Ian Frazier

I think what is important for things to be funny is if you the listener, or the reader, get a chance to supply the humor of it yourself.

- Ian Frazier

Writing humor for me is more like a watchful-ness. You have to watch. When you say something funny, or someone else does, it's more like you wait for the piece.

- Ian Frazier

Siberia is a state of mind.

- Ian Frazier

I only saw one English-speaking person all the way across Siberia.

- Ian Frazier