Top 44 Ian Frazier Quotes
#1. I don't have a disregard for my reader in humor pieces.
Ian Frazier
#2. Siberia is so big, it's almost more an idea than a place
Ian Frazier
#3. One very important key to maintaining our daily sanity is a simple scheduling tactic I call Putting Things the Hell Off.
Ian Frazier
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. I would hate to see the idea of freedom disappear, and I wonder if maybe it will.
Ian Frazier
#9. 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
#10. America can enjoy a vital, fully functioning government, with all the benefits provided by Texas, while reducing Texas at the same time.
Ian Frazier
#11. Would Crazy Horse have spent this much to remodel a kitchen?
Ian Frazier
#12. 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
#13. I believe that when Crazy Horse was killed, something more than a man's life was snuffed out.
Ian Frazier
#14. 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
#15. Scientists estimate that the Siberian permafrost holds the remains of 150 million mammoths - or about 8 million more than the 142 million Russians aboveground in Russia today.
Ian Frazier
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. People in Russia adapt to misery by a deep, deep humor.
Ian Frazier
#20. I only saw one English-speaking person all the way across Siberia.
Ian Frazier
#21. In Russia, meanwhile, dedicated young people kept trying to kill the tsar.
Ian Frazier
#23. When I needed to think or was really upset, generally I climbed a tree.
Ian Frazier
#24. Russian humor is to adapt or make some sense or nonsense out of the insanity of their lives.
Ian Frazier
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#29. Every once in a while, people need to be in the presence of things that are really far away.
Ian Frazier
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. Words are charms. It's like a song you didn't even know you knew.
Ian Frazier
#34. Leading economists have shown that by shrinking Texas, we can actually create more income for Texas in the long run.
Ian Frazier
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. Everything in Russia is made of cement - phone booths, fence posts and light bulbs.
Ian Frazier
#38. Roy Blount is so funny, and he sounds like he's just talking, and the next thing you know he has tossed off
an essay as elegant and intricately structured as a birdsong. His ear for American speech is better than anybody's.
Ian Frazier
#39. She said being inside a language was like being in a person's house - after a while you came to see why the teapot was where it was.
Ian Frazier
#40. 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
#41. Sometimes travel is merely an opportunity taken when you can.
Ian Frazier
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. Then a beat-up car lurched into sight towing an even more beat-up car. As the cars came near, I saw that they were connected back to front by a loop made of two seat belts buckled to each other. That was the only time I ever saw a Russian use a seat belt for any purpose at all.
Ian Frazier
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