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Quotes by Canadian Authors

"We've had a beautiful friendship, Diana. We've never marred it by one quarrel or coolness or unkind word; and I hope it will always be so. But things can't be quite the same after this. You'll have other interests. I'll just be on the outside."


"Trivers, pursuing his theory of the emotions to its logical conclusion, notes that in a world of walking lie detectors the best strategy is to believe your own lies. You can't leak your hidden intentions if you don't think they are your intentions. According to his theory of self-deception, the conscious mind sometimes hides the truth from itself the better to hide it from others. But the truth is useful, so it should be registered somewhere in the mind, walled off from the parts that interact with other people."

"The whole world loves a maverick and the whole world wants the maverick to achieve something nobler than simple rebellion."

"Successful people play the part of being successful consistently in all that they do."


"As with any form of mental self-improvement, you must learn to turn your gaze inward, concentrate on processes that usually run automatically, and try to wrest control of them so that you can apply them more mindfully."

"Wherever there is society, there is authority and the temptation to disobedience because our individual wills refuse to submit..."

"And without forgiveness, there is never any peace."

"We 'have' all received on grace after another, but we only recognize the glory of God in this moment 'when we wake to the one grace after another'."

"You're sad because you're sad.It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.Go see a shrink or take a pill,or hug your sadness like an eyeless dollyou need to sleep.Well, all children are sadbut some get over it.Count your blessings. Better than that,buy a hat. Buy a coat or a pet.Take up dancing to forget."

"Brainstorming is the nexus of ideas."

"The p'int of good writing is to know when to stop."

"We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts."

"I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art."

"And the reason Luke is thinking about time and free will is because he believes that money is the closest human beings have ever come to crystallizing time and free will into a compact physical form. Cash. Cash is a time crystal. Cash allows you to multiply your will, and it allows you to speed up time. Cash is what defines us as a species. Nothing else in the universe has money."

"Childhood trauma does not come in one single package."

"They've all got stories, Jess thought. I need to know them. Best of all, he could know them. He could learn anything here. It felt like limitless possibilities."

"Inasmuch as I am a spiritual man, I do believe in God - I think that He created anorder for the world; I believe that, in constantly bombarding Him with requests for miracles,we're also asking that He unravel the fabric of the world. A world of continuous miracleswould be a cartoon, not a world."

"Love you! Girl, you're in the very core of my heart. I hold you there like a jewel. Didn't I promise you I'd never tell you a lie? Love you! I love you with all there is of me to love. Heart, soul, brain. Every fibre of body and spirit thrilling to the sweetness of you. There's nobody in the world for me but you, Valancy."

"All those years thinking I was saved and had said my yes to God, but was really living the no."

"I think we ought to find something else to do, said Mandy. "But Alecto my love, you're the first person to notice my retro diner kitchen. When my parents saw it, they thought I was creating a weird art project."I like it. It's got that let's-drown-ourselves-in-better-days type ambiance, Alecto declared, his gray eyes narrowed."


"The audible signals people can produce are not a series of crisp beeps like on a touch-tone phone. Speech is a river of breath, bent into hisses and hums by the soft flesh of the mouth and throat."


"Jews are known for many things, but strength, swiftness, and agility are not among them. There is one trait, as controversial as it is familiar, for which Jews are above all known, and that is shrewdness in business."

"It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it?"


"Left to our own devices, we are apt to backslide to our instinctive conceptual ways. This underscores the place of education in a scientifically literate democracy, and even suggests a statement of purpose for it (a surprisingly elusive principle in higher education today). The goal of education is to make up for the shortcomings in our instinctive ways of thinking about the physical and social world. And education is likely to succeed not by trying to implant abstract statements in empty minds but by taking the mental models that are our standard equipment, applying them to new subjects in selective analogies, and assembling them into new and more sophisticated combinations."


"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."

"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."

"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."

"Her metaphors for her children included barnacles encrusting a ship and limpets clinging to a rock."

"Writers don't have to keep themselves honest. They have to keep themselves accurate."
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