Quotations from *Young Men and Fire*, 1 of 2
Norman Maclean
1902-1990 American

In the Gates of the Mountains there have been many blowups. Now there are many rattlesnakes and nothing more fragile than mountain goats, themselves tougher than the mountains they disdain, although at a distance they are white wings of butterflies floating up and down and sideways across the faces of fragments of arches and cliffs, touching but never becoming attached to them.
—Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

Yet we should also go on wondering if there is not some shape, form, design as of artistry in this universe we are entering that is composed of catastrophes and missing parts.
—Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

His whole flight to the ground takes an average of only a minute. This minute is about the only moment a Smokejumper is ever alone, and it is one of the most lonely moments in his life... Nothing is there except the jumper and his equipment made by the lowest bidder, and he himself has thinned out to the vanishing point of being only decisions once made that he can’t do anything about ever after.
—Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

They were young and did not leave much behind them and need someone to remember them.
—Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

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