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Quotes by Canadian Authors
"Maybe I don't really want to know what's going on. Maybe I'd rather not know. Maybe I couldn't bear to know. The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge."
"Terrell is weeping soundlessly, and despite the guard's objection, he raises his hand up to the glass. Geraldine mimics him, lining her fingers up with his. It's lonely to think that one little sheet of glass could create such a thick distance between them, but all the same, regardless of what he's done, he's still one of the closest friends she has."
"Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you."
"Whatever happened to books? Suddenly everybody's talking about these 100-hour movies called 'Breaking Bad'. People are talking about TV the same way they used to talk about novels back in the 1980s. I like to think I hang out with some pretty smart people, but all they talk about is 'Breaking Bad.'"
"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."
"It's been happening since I was in kindergarten. Not them all the time, but other kids, you know. Every day. It never stops, and it never goes away, thanks to the Internet--it just keeps happening every minute, every day. And I just want it to stop. I think about how to do it, you know. How to kill them. All kinds of elaborate things, like trapping them in pits and burying them alive, or covering them with concrete."
"History is the record of an encounter between character and circumstances."
"Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings."
"No bacon for you.""Then no eggs for you. Either of you."Eve glowered at him. "Prisoner exchange?"They glared at each other, then swapped pans and started scooping."
"I'm not sure Americans are hesitant to do this again - to fight another war, because it looked to them like a courageous and terrific endeavor."
"Sometimes it feels as if everything in life is just something we haul into the grave."
"It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it?"
"God is forgiving or we would not still be walking this world. But to be moral is not to need his divine forgiveness, I think."
"Oh, Gilbert, don't let's ever grow too old and wise... no, not too old and silly for fairyland."
"One of the cruelest things you can do to another person is pretend you care about them more than you really do."
"Oliver laughed - actually laughed."I like this new Claire," he said. "You should work her this hard all the time, Myrnin. She's interesting when she's forthright."Claire, possessed by the spirit of Eve, shot him the finger. Which made him laugh again, shake his head, and walk up the steps."
"We're just paper on a shelf, in the end."
"I sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing. I'm a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black."
"The European wars of religion were more deadly than the First World War, proportionally speaking, and in the range of the Second World War in Europe. The Inquisition, the persecution of heretics and infidels and witches, they racked up pretty high death tolls."
"Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky-up-up-up-into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer."
"Amelie seemed to focus on her again. For a few seconds she regarded her, frowning, and then smiled just a little. "So I recall," she said. "Not all wars are waged with bullets and swords, indeed. Some are wars of wills and ideas. It's good we both remember that." The smile faded. "But not all ideas win the war, and not all wills are strong enough. Darkness can descend so easily."
"I was tired of seeing the Graces always depicted as beautiful young things. I think wisdom comes with age and life and pain. And knowing what matters."
"Trees were not hard, irritable things, but discreetly orgasmic beings moaning at a level too deep for our brutish ears. And flowers were quick explosive orgasms, like making love in the shower."
"Canadians can easily 'pass for American' as long as we don't accidentally use metric measurements or apologize when hit by a car."
"Nature is to zoos as God is to churches."
"You have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?"
"Her metaphors for her children included barnacles encrusting a ship and limpets clinging to a rock."
"Expand your world. (Stories about wizards and spells) are very frequently about power relationships..."
"I have always held those political opinions which point to the universal brotherhood of man, no matter in what rank of life he may have taken his origin."
"Never be silent with persons you love and distrust," Mr. Carpenter had said once. "Silence betrays."
"You know, I really think that when God puts together families, he sticks his finger into the white pages and selects a group of people at random and then says to them all, 'Hey! You're going to spend the next seventy years together, even though you have nothing in common and don't even like each other. And, should you not feel yourself caring about any of this group of strangers, even for a second, you will just feel dreadful."
"If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll never be and you need not waste time in trying."
"I saw a lot of men die there. Most men. Do you know what killed them? Despair, said Finney. 'They believed themselves to be prisoners. I lived with those men, ate the same maggot-infested food, slept in the same beds, did the same back-breaking work. But they died and I lived. Do you know why? 'You were free. 'I was free. Milton was right the mind is its own place. I was never a prisoner. Not then, not now."
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