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Quotes by Canadian Authors
"Houses are like people, Agent Lemieux. They have secrets. I'll tell you something I've learned.'Armand Gamache dropped his voice so that Agent Lemieux had to strain to hear.'Do you know what makes us sick, Agent Lemieux?'Lemieux shook his head. Then out of the darkness and stillness he heard the answer.'It's our secrets that make us sick."
"He was so lonely that he laughed at himself."
"The word "rights", is something that governments need to provide you and protect you from but, the governments are the basic violators of all human rights."
"I don't know, I don't want to talk as much. (...) It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like treasures. I don't like to have them laughed at or wondered over."
"Anne, look here. Can't we be good friends?For a moment Anne hesitated. She had an odd, newly awakened consciousness under all her outraged dignity that the half-shy, half-eager expression in Gilbert's hazel eyes was something that was very good to see. Her heart gave a quick, queer little beat. But the bitterness of her old grievance promptly stiffened up her wavering determination. That scene of two years before flashed back into her recollection as vividly as if it had taken place yesterday. Gilbert had called her "carrots and had brought about her disdain before the whole school. Her resentment, which to other and older people might be as laughable as its cause, was in no whit allayed and softened by time seemingly. She hated Gilbert Blythe! She would never forgive him!"
"Everybody has basically the same family, it's just reconfigured slightly differently from one to the next."
"The vast majority of people are unthinking prejudice machines."
"The whole world loves a maverick and the whole world wants the maverick to achieve something nobler than simple rebellion."
"Poetry is paying attention to life when all the world seems asleep to its beauties and truths..."
"And without forgiveness, there is never any peace."
"Sending everything they touch to the grave is what they do, but they don't see it as a grave mistake, yet."
"Handmade presents are scary because they reveal that you have too much free time."
"...Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive--it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there?"
"At some point we must achieve our identity -we can't be always in adolescence seeking who we are..."
"I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art."
"The joy of small that makes life large."
"Now here's a good one:you're lying on your deathbed.You have one hour to live.Who is it, exactly, you have neededall these years to forgive?"
"Then the immortal heart of the woods will beat against ours and its subtle life will steal into our veins and make us its own forever, so that no matter where we go or how widely we wander we shall yet be drawn back to the forest to find our most enduring kinship."
"Wasted strokes, like missed deadlines, are preventable and costly."
"How can I help this son of mine see when I can't see? The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they've held their own peace?"
"Satirize wickedness if you must--but pity weakness."
"Christianity is a religion in a rush."
"Well, I can throw a mean comeback, so there's that. I will crush them on wit."
"You're dead," I repeated. "So why are you in my dream?"He raised the bill of his olive drab ball cap with one finger. " Good question. Morbid, isn't it?""What?""Dreaming about dead peolpe. Creepy. You ever see a therapist about that?""I'm not -" Even in dreams, I couldn't win an argument. Even when he was dead."
"Perhaps we should rejoice that people's emotions aren't designed for the good of the group. Often the best way to benefit one's group is to displace, subjugate, or annihilate the group next door. Ants in a colony are closely related, and each is a paragon of unselfishness. That's why ants are one of the few kinds of animal that wage war and take slaves. When human leaders have manipulated or coerced people into submerging their interests into the group's, the outcomes are some of the history's worst atrocities."
"We didn't anticipate that the formula would trigger such a violent response. In the future, you'll only receive the unprocessed raw materials."So it's because I'm young."No, he said. "It's because you're young and you refuse to acknowledge what you are. What it means. What it promises. You're fighting your condition, and that makes it almost impossible for you to control yourself. You need to admit it to yourself, Michael. You'll never be human again."
"I was gladly cuffed, shackled, loaded into the caged bus and driven through the main gate of Bare Hill Correctional Facility for what I pray to God will be forever."
"What time is it?""Three a.m. Michael's making a snack. You want anything?""Um...no. Thanks." She slid off the couch and then stood there like an idiot, unwilling to leave because he was still smiling and...she liked it. "Who won?""Which game?""Oh. I guess I was asleep for a while.""Don't worry. We didn't let the zombies get you." This time, his smile was positively wicked. Claire felt it like a hot blanket all over her skin."
"I need to be a vampire," she said. "and I want one of them to make it happen. Michael will do fine. I don't care who turns me. The important thing is that if I change, I'll be a princess."I was wrong. She was really crazy."
"I'm the last person to ask about unrequited love - I've run away to the Moon and fled to its valleys..."
"Most of the women who have offered themselves for public office over the years have done so, I believe, more because of the 'dirt' than in spite of it."
"By now you must have guessed: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, Take me to your leaders. Even I - unused to your ways though I am - would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them.Instead I will say, Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths.These are worth it. These are what I have come for."
"You can't get mad at weather because weather's not about you. Apply that lesson to most other aspects of life."
"Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome."
"Via the conduit of a wild dog pack, she has now made the ultimate Gift to her fellow Creatures, and has become part of God's great dance of proteins."
"I learned about religion the way most children learned about sex, [in the schoolyard]. . . . They terrified me by telling me there was a dead man in the sky watching everything I did and I retaliated by explaining where babies came from. Some of their mothers phoned mine to complain, though I think I was more upset than they were: they didn't believe me but I believed them."
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