Words matter. These are the best Ian Frazier Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I don’t have a disregard for my reader in humor pieces.
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.
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.
Russians don’t complain, usually.
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.
Siberia is a state of mind.
There’s an idea of the Plains as the middle of nowhere, something to be contemptuous of. But it’s really a heroic place.
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.
Leading economists have shown that by shrinking Texas, we can actually create more income for Texas in the long run.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
America can enjoy a vital, fully functioning government, with all the benefits provided by Texas, while reducing Texas at the same time.
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.
People in Russia adapt to misery by a deep, deep humor.
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.
Words are charms. It’s like a song you didn’t even know you knew.
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.
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.
I only saw one English-speaking person all the way across Siberia.
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.
When I needed to think or was really upset, generally I climbed a tree.
Everything in Russia is made of cement – phone booths, fence posts and light bulbs.
