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Quotes by Canadian Authors
"How is it that food STILL contains calories that make you gain weight in the 21st CENTURY?! It's like scientists aren't even trying!"
"Let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable,' said Gamache. Seeing Beauvoir's puzzled expression he added, 'Emerson.''Lake and Palmer?''Ralph and Waldo."
"You do violence with your words if you force them - art is given - the words received, moment by moment from unseen hands - call it a Muse ..."
"That's very rude," Myrnin said. "I haven't brought my fangs our for some time. Not in mixed company, anyway."
"Even when you take a holiday from technology, technology doesn't take a break from you."
"You can use words if you wish, but I'm warning you - I've learned how to read your heart ..."
"She put her hands together and Saul hoped she wasn't about to say-'Namaste,' said CC, bowing. 'He taught me that. Very spiritual.'She said 'spiritual' so often it had become meaningless to Saul.'He said, CC Das, you have a great spiritual gift. You must leave this place and share it with the world. You must tell people to be calm.'As she spoke Saul mouthed the words, lip-synching to the familiar tune.'CC Das, he said, you above all others know that when the chakras are in alignment all is white. And when all is white, all is right.'Saul wondered whether she was confusing an Indian mystic with a KKK member. Ironic, really, if she was."
"They'd crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn't. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comforted, not fully. Never again. Food was nutrition, little more. Breaths were sighs. And they knew something the rest didn't. They knew how lucky the rest of the world was."
"If you are for gun control, then you are not against guns, because the guns will be needed to disarm people. So it's not that you are anti-gun. You'll need the police's guns to take away other people's guns. So you're very pro-gun; you just believe that only the Government (which is, of course, so reliable, honest, moral and virtuous) should be allowed to have guns. There is no such thing as gun control. There is only centralizing gun ownership in the hands of a small political elite and their minions."
"Salad bars are like a restaurant's lungs. They soak up the impurities and bacteria in the environment, leaving you with much cleaner air to enjoy."
"A bard's down-to-earth love: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red and when she walks, treads on the ground..."
"I believe that the rape-is-not-about-sex doctrine will go down in history as an example of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. It is preposterous on the face of it, does not deserve its sanctity, is contradicted by a mass of evidence, and is getting in the way of the only morally relevant goal surrounding rape, the effort to stamp it out."
"Run first,' Shane said. 'Mourn later.'It was the perfect motto for Morganville."
"Well, Naomi said cheerfully, "what's the worst that can happen? They were silent, considering that, because there were just so many possibilities. But in the end, it was a better idea than Facebook."
"In this whole screwed-up town, you're the only thing that's always been right to me," he whispered. "I love you, Claire." She saw something that might have been just a flash of panic go across his expression, but then he steadied again. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I do. I love you."
"Did you know that in your eyes there are bright flecks of green and orange - and that they are lovely?..."
"Do be careful. I can't replace you as easily as all that."
"More and more I feel like a letter-deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one."
"Writers don't have to keep themselves honest. They have to keep themselves accurate."
"Here's a tip...If you leave a girl crying you're probably not doing your Don Juan routine right, asshole."
"Don't mistake dramatics for a conscience."
"Bang. You're dead.'Gamache swung around, but had recognised the voice an instant after he'd begun to turn.'You're a sneak, Jean Guy. I'm going to have to put a cow bell on you.''Not again.' It wasn't often he could get the drop on the chief. But Beauvoir had begun to worry. Suppose he snuck up on Gamache sometime and he had a heart attack? It would certainly take the fun out of it."
"I gave you painted air - tears I couldn't weep - truths I couldn't speak - all the words that caught in my throat..."
"Chronocanine Envy:Sadness experienced when one realized that, unlike one's dog, one cannot live only in the present tense. As Kierkegaard said, "Life must be lived forward."
"Setting fire to the roofs, getting away with the loot, suiting herself. She studied modern philosophy, read Sartre on the side, smoked Gitanes, and cultivated a look of bored contempt. But inwardly, she was seething with unfocused excitement, and looking for someone to worship."
"The possibility of injury or death was a strong attraction: as the online world became more and more pre-edited and slicked up, and as even its so-called reality sites raised questions about authenticity in the minds of the viewers, the rough, unpolished physical world was taking on a mystic allure."
"Here's a health to our Captain, so gallant and freeWhether stuck on a rock or asleep 'neath a treeOr rolled in the arms of some nymph of the seaWhich is where we would all like to be, man!"
"Yes, the experience of all stages of life are valuable, not just of youth."
"I want my father to be just my father, the way he has always been, not a separate person with an earlier, mythological life of his own. Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened."
"We go on and on about our differences. But, you know, our differences are less important than our similarities. People have a lot in common with one another, whether they see that or not."
"Shakespeare: the best way to peace is to have a still and quiet conscience. Or none at all, thought Gamache."
"Government health care changes the relationship between the citizen and the state, and, in fact, I think it's an assault on citizenship."
"There were a few other moves of his father's he could do without as well - the sucker punches, the ruffling of the hair, the way of pronouncing the word son, in a slightly deeper voice. This hearty way of talking was getting worse, as if his father were auditioning for the role of Dad, but without much hope."
"I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and just as complicated. But sometimes it's hard to put up with."
"There really isn't any limit to the number of people who want a piece of you, and it's all important stuff."
"Writing poetry is a state of free float."
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