Daniel J. Rice Quotes

There was a wildness inside him; someday he would capture it. Not to be tamed, but to be released. For only by understanding his mind could it be freed.
Daniel J. Rice
Every falling leaf reminds me that I too will soon be separated from these trees. Trying to capture freedom is like trying to catch a falling leaf. Occasionally you may grab one out of the air and hold it in your hands, but now what?
Daniel J. Rice
We smoked fat cigars by the campfire and they tasted like wood and ash. The inhale and exhale was exciting. Blowing smoke rings in the calm forest air was followed by a deep swallow of cheap beer, and this too was exciting. There was no judgment in the wild, and so indulgences were plentiful. There were no regulators here and we were free to indulge in the deep intoxications that made our minds free.
Daniel J. Rice
I watched the surrounding landscape with great curiosity, and I wanted to discover the words that could describe all its unspoiled beauty.
Daniel J. Rice
My hands are flowing like sunlight. The shapes and colors are astounding. I don't understand these images that are empowering me. My brush touches the canvas like photons to the earth, and a new world develops, free from my control, yet intrinsically dependent upon me. I am sweating with elation. I have no idea what I am doing, or what it is my hands are trying to see. There is so much strength in this clarity I am overpowered by the independence of it.
Daniel J. Rice
As the saturating colors of sun-life fade from sight, the ominous moon reaches out its long arm and applies the dark dyes of night.
Daniel J. Rice
Only lost photographs that were never taken know what my mind speaks of when we are alone together.
Daniel J. Rice
The truth of existence was a happiness separated from the easy happy life. There was music in the forest. There was clean air where nobody could hear him breathe.
Daniel J. Rice
I walked slowly to enjoy this freedom, and when I came out of the mountains, I saw the sky over the prairie, and I thought that if heaven was real, I hoped it was a place I never had to go, for this earth was greater than any paradise.
Daniel J. Rice
The contemplative man always lives alone. Regardless of who may reside in his home, his is a solitary world.
Daniel J. Rice
If you have not touched the rocky wall of a canyon. If you have not heard a rushing river pound over cobblestones. If you have not seen a native trout rise in a crystalline pool beneath a shattering riffle, or a golden eagle spread its wings and cover you in shadow. If you have not seen the tree line recede to the top of a bare crested mountain. If you have not looked into a pair of wild eyes and seen your own reflection. Please, for the good of your soul, travel west.
Daniel J. Rice
It occurred to me that no words by the tongue of man can express the simplicities of a quiet land, so I returned to the river.
Daniel J. Rice
What man does not seek the power of his dreams, and believe in his ability to match the grace of his illusions.
Daniel J. Rice
When I returned to camp, they walked behind me on the trail, and we spoke not a word about getting skunked today, but rather talked about the days we returned with a stringer full of fish, and how we filleted them and the left the guts out for bears and eagles, and how those fish tasted fresh when we fried them over a fire.
Daniel J. Rice
I was disoriented by the idea that men should ever leave the forest.
Daniel J. Rice
A man without enemies is a dishonest man.
Daniel J. Rice
There are places which exist in this world beyond the reach of imagination.
Daniel J. Rice
The past and the future were starlight, seemingly so close, but forever out of reach. Eli felt that starlight, the infinity of knowing nothing but his finite existence.
Daniel J. Rice