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Quotes by Canadian Authors
"What could be more fundamental to our sense of meaning and purpose than a conception of whether the strivings of the human race over long stretches of time have left us better or worse off? How, in particular, are we to make sense of modernity-of the erosion of family, tribe, tradition, and religion by the forces of individualism, cosmopolitanism, reason, and science?"
"It takes all sorts of people to make a world, as I've often heard, but I think there are some who could be spared,' Anne told her reflection in the east gable mirror that night."
"If human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween."
"Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does."
"It can't last forever. Others have thought suchthings, in bad times before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn'tlast forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had."
"We shall all respect the principles of each other and do nothing that would be regarded as an act of oppression to any portion of the people."
"I hate to lend a book I love it never seems quite the same when it comes back to me."
"The feelings that pass between us are deeper than fleshly touches..."
"Perhaps he was merely being friendly. Perhaps he saw the look on my face and mistook it for something else. Really what I wanted was the cigarette."
"Lovely thoughts came flying to meet me like birds. They weren't my thoughts. I couldn't think anything half so exquisite. They came from somewhere."
"It can't last forever. Others have thought such things, in bad times before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn't last forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had."
"I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me."
"The advent of cellphones may, in the end, be no more relevant than the ability of laptops to change our written documents into ones using cool new fonts."
"I think of how people can betray me simply by not caring enough to hide the fact of how little they care.I think of how the person who needs the other person the least in a relationship is the stronger member."
"I don't think anyone ever gets over anything in life they merely get used to it."
"I knew I loved you when I kept trying to run away and find reasons why it wouldn't work."
"Obsolescence never meant the end of anything, it's just the beginning."
"Love does not last forever, then?'He asked me the same thing this morning,' she said. 'No, it does not - not love that has been betrayed. One realizes that one has loved a mirage, someone who never really existed. Not that love dies immediately or soon, even then. But it does die and cannot be revived."
"I like doing radio because it's so intimate. The moment people hear your voice, you're inside there heads, not only that, you're in there laying eggs."
"It has been a Prosy day for us, but for some people it has been a wonderful day. Someone was rapturously happy in it. Perhaps a great deed has been done somewhere today- a great poem written- or a great man born. And some heart has been broken, Phil."
"The tombstone over the grave of the conscience always reads: "Human Nature"."
"This. I live in this place, make porridge, scrub toilets, do laundry, and for days, weeks, I am brave and I do get out of bed and I think on this. I study this, the full life, the being fully ready for the end. I start to think that maybe there is a way out of nightmares to dreams? Maybe?"
"From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story."
"History is the same story with different costumes."
"We are made up of everything we have ever been, Percy. It is the joy and the pain of our individuality. There are no two of us the same."
"All atheists must examine the Non Aggression Principle."
"Honesty requires that we communicate our thoughts and feelings, not our conclusions."
"Shame and blame should have no place in our body, mind, or spirit."
"Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, light blue, light mauve, and the darker ones, velvet and purple, black cat's ears in the sun, indigo shadow, and the bleeding hearts, so female in shape it was a surprise they'd not long since been rooted out. There is something subversive about this garden of Serena's, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently."
"Expectations are made to be exceeded!"
"The processing of universals is the job of the unconscious. If we feed it the opposite it breaks, when it breaks we break and the people around us break."
"What is sacred is the other person -we forget that sometimes - and fail to honor who they are ..."
"Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud..."
"Instead of asking, "Why is there war? we might ask, "Why is there peace? We can obsess not just over what we have been doing wrong but also over what we have been doing right. Because we have been doing something right, and it would be good to know what, exactly, it is."
"Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine."
"I need you to be a listener - you need me to hang word on. We're friends because neither has discovered a limit where the other ends..."
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