Quotations from *Young Men and Fire*, 2 of 2
Norman Maclean
1902-1990 American

He had been sick and had been advised to drop his full-time duties and retire to California, but not wanting to live in California he had hunted around until he found a doctor who told him California would be bad for his health. In Montana there are two kinds of doctors—those who tell you you should move to California for your health and those you tell you that you will die if you do; so Brackebusch didn’t have to hunt long to get the advice he wanted.
—Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

Long ago a science teacher told me, “The universe, she is a bitch.”
—Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

There is always time lost just in the mechanics of turning a crew around and getting it started in another direction. But the greatest loss was the loss that came in morale and organization in turning a crew around and retreating from the fire. The training schedule of Smokejumpers includes no class on how to run from a fire as fast as possible.

The fire was having no organizational problems. It was gaining speed all the time.
—Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

You can see tragedy coming from a considerable distance when you are older, but when you are young tragedy does not pertain to you and certainly never catches up to you. There are pieces of premonitions of tragedy floating around, but they do not yet add up to your tragedy. There are separate stabs of fear, of pity, of self-pity, but to a degree in separate parts of the body. Then suddenly they all merge into one sense, the encompassing sense of inevitability.
—Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

To project ourselves into their final thoughts will require feelings about a special kind of death—the sudden death in fire of the young, elite, unfulfilled, and seemingly unconquerable. As the elite of young men, they felt more surely than most who are young that they were immortal. So if we are to feel with them, we must feel that we are set apart from the rest of the universe and safe from fires, all of which are expected to be put out by ten o’clock the morning after Smokejumpers are dropped on them.
—Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire