James Oliver Curwood Quotes & Sayings

Before the railroad's thin lines of steel bit their way up through the wilderness, Athabasca Landing was the picturesque threshold over which one must step who would enter into the mystery and adventure of the great white North. — James Oliver Curwood

Of all the odors of a camp, the smell of bacon reaches farthest in the forest. It needs no wind. It drifts on its own wings. On a still night a fox will sniff it a mile away - twice that far if the air is moving in the right direction. It was this smell of bacon that came to Baree where he lay in his hollow on top of the beaver dam. — James Oliver Curwood

In every man's heart there is a devil, but we do not know the man as bad until the devil is roused. — James Oliver Curwood

The greatest thrill is not to kill but to let live. — James Oliver Curwood

There are so many kinds of madness, so many ways in which the human brain may go wrong; and so often it happens that what we call madness is both reasonable and just. It is so. Yes. A little reason is good for us, a little more makes wise men of some of us
but when our reason over-grows us and we reach too far, something breaks and we go insane. — James Oliver Curwood

Nature is my religion. And my desire ... my ambition ... the great goal I wish to achieve is to take my readers with me into the heart of this Nature. I love it, and I feel that they must love it ... if I can only get the two acquainted. — James Oliver Curwood

To steal book seems like stealing the soul out of someone. — James Oliver Curwood

He loved life. He loved the stars silently glowing down at him tonight. He loved even the gray, lifeless rock, which recalled to his imaginative genius the terrific and interesting life that had once existed
he loved the ghostly majesty of the grave-like pinnacle that rose above him, and beyond that he loved all the world.
But most of all, more than his own life or all that a thousand lives might hold for him, he loved the violet-eyed girl. — James Oliver Curwood

And in my books it is my desire to tell of the lives of the wild things which I know as they are actually lived. It is not my desire to humanize them. If we are to love wild animals so much that we do not want to kill them we MUST KNOW THEM AS THEY ACTUALLY LIVE. And in their lives, in the facts of their lives, there is so much of real and honest romance and tragedy, so much that makes them akin to ourselves that the animal biographer need not step aside from the paths of actuality to hold one's interest. — James Oliver Curwood