Life & Wisdom Quote by James Herriot

Herriot’s charm was always that he made craft look like temperament. This line performs that same trick: it shrugs at technique while quietly defending a philosophy of work. “I think” opens with modesty, a verbal softener that keeps the speaker from sounding like a guru. Then comes the real claim: pleasure as propulsion. He doesn’t credit discipline, ambition, or suffering; he credits liking it “so much,” as if writing were less a career than a bodily reflex. The payoff phrase - “come out of me automatically” - turns creativity into physiology, something closer to breathing than to labor.

The subtext is cannier than it looks. Herriot isn’t saying writing requires no effort; he’s pointing to the kind of effort you stop noticing when the subject has its hooks in you. That matters for a writer whose fame rests on converting the muddy, unglamorous routines of a Yorkshire vet into stories readers inhale. His world is built from early mornings, hard cases, and animals that don’t care about your prose style. In that context, “automatic” is less mystical inspiration than practiced attention: the habit of seeing, remembering, and translating life into narrative without self-conscious strain.

There’s also a gentle democratic message embedded here. Herriot implies that “voice” isn’t a rare gift; it’s what happens when affection meets repetition. Like his best scenes, the sentence flatters the reader into thinking: maybe the secret isn’t agony. Maybe it’s finding the work you can’t help doing, then doing it long enough that it starts to feel inevitable.