Jimmy Johnson Quotes

I can't start a fire with two sticks or hunt rabbits or anything like that.

We live in such a consumer-based world. Everything we do, someone else has provided for us, so there is something really empowering about knowing that once I have found the right pieces of wood, I can start a fire and keep myself warm and skin an animal to eat and make its skin into leather.

I'm a survivalist and a survivor.

I like the skill set required to be an outdoorsman - to cook food over fire and to climb rocks without ropes, to move around using nothing but yourself and maybe some rudimentary tools.

I started studying herbalism and edible plants that existed in the wild. And then I realized, "Okay, cool. I know how to make a fire with sticks and I know how to build a shelter, but I live 90 percent of my life in an urban environment, so these skills aren't really going to help me because there aren't trees that grow in Los Angeles that I can just take a branch and make fire out of, because that wood isn't conducive for that. So I started learning urban survival skills.

It's the little details I love. How to fletch your arrows with owl feathers, because owls fly silently, so maybe your arrows will, too. How to carry fire in a piece of smouldering fungus wrapped in birchbark. These are the things which help a world come alive.

When you are facing the wilderness on your own, you have a totally different attitude to someone who works in government or who has a monthly cheque.

The appeal of the wild for me is its unpredictability. You have to develop an awareness, react fast, be resourceful and come up with a plan and act on it.

We are shut up in school and college recitation rooms for ten to fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods. We cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of day by the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate. We are afraid of a horse or a cow, of a dog, of a cat, of a spider. Far better was the Roman rule to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing.

Dimitri seemed like the kind of guy you could throw into the wilderness and he would survive off anything.

My grandmother would hide bread for when maybe another war would come. You had to be ready.

I spent my summers bottling peaches and my winters rotating supplies. When the World of Men failed, my family would continue on, unaffected.

Growing up with Koli boys is a different experience. It teaches you survival.

I grew up in Alaska, okay? My dad graduated high school and went straight to the mountains. He had $300 and staked a claim. He didn't even have enough to put a title on the land: just had the records that he bought before he moved.

Jeremy can't do anything. I've never discovered anything he can do. I mean, he can drive a car round a track pretty well, but he wouldn't be able to light a fire.

I met a Swedish single mum called Annalise who is living in the wilderness. Her dilemma is finding enough wood to make a fire to keep warm.

During one of my treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We were compelled to live on food and water for several days.

Working and making a fire doth discretion require.

It is better to live under a tree in a jungle inhabited by tigers and elephants, to maintain oneself in such a place with ripe fruits and spring water, to lie down on grass and to wear the ragged barks of trees than to live amongst one's relations when reduced to poverty.

He may travel who can subsist on the wild fruits and game of the most cultivated country.

I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me.... I milk the sky and the earth.

I can't remember exactly the first thing I wrote, but one of the stories, was about a pilot whose plane crashed on a desert island, and the only other life on the island was a brown cow with yellow spots. The cow had... to survive, had taught itself to eat and get nutriments from sand. I guess, I've always been interested in adaptability and taking whatever life hands you and running with it.

I sleep equally well in a soft bed or on the grass beside the road. If I am given food and shelter, fine. If not, I'm just as happy. Many times I am given shelter by total strangers. When hospitality is not available there are always bus depots, railroad stations and all night truck stops.... When no shelter is available to me, I sleep in the fields or by the side of the road with God to guard me.

She was afraid, but she couldn't just sit around waiting for someone to save her. She had to try to save herself, try to figure it out.

Perhaps I am the turtle, able to live simply anywhere, even underwater for short periods, with my home on my back.