Time & Perspective Quote by Jim Harrison

The line lands like a confession dressed up as a gripe: Harrison isn’t just complaining about time management, he’s describing a kind of moral exhaustion that comes from being good at the wrong job for your own art. “Tight schedule” is the bogus virtue here, the thing institutions reward and writers rarely possess. He admits, almost with a shrug, that the writer’s life resists neat logistics. That’s not romantic posturing; it’s an acknowledgement that the work demands a diffuse attention that doesn’t clock in and out.

Then he turns the screw: “if you’re any good at teaching, you get sucked dry.” The phrasing is blunt, bodily, a little ugly on purpose. Teaching isn’t framed as noble or fulfilling; it’s vampiric, even when it’s chosen freely. The sting is in the reason: “because you like your students.” Affection becomes the trap. Competence becomes exploitation. The better you are at showing up for others, the less of you remains for the page.

The subtext is a critique of the way creative labor gets subsidized by service work, especially in the academy: write in the margins, publish between meetings, be grateful for the paycheck. Harrison’s resentment isn’t aimed at students so much as at the cultural setup that treats the writer’s time as infinitely divisible. “No time left to write yourself” is the kicker. Teaching can make you articulate, generous, socially useful. It can also hollow out the private, undistracted space where a writer’s real voice forms.