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Quotes by Canadian Authors
"We should expose whatever ends are harmful and whatever ideas are false, and not confuse the two."
"The sixties are like a theme park to them. They wear the costume, buy their tickets, and they have the experience."
"She was always at her best with him, with a delightful feeling of being understood. To love is easy and therefore common - but to understand - how rare it is!"
"Mrs. Lynde says, 'Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed."
"Our library isn't very extensive," said Anne, "but every book in it is a friend. We've picked our books up through the years, here and there, never buying one until we had first read it and knew that it belonged to the race of Joseph."
"Actually, I'm an overnight success, but it took twenty years."
"Either way, he was always staring into a bottomless pit, or into a whirlpool that forever sucked him inexorably inward to its vortex."
"My mind cannot grasp forever,' she told him. 'There must surely be an end somewhere. But the big question is-what it beyond the end?"
"Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond, I read about them and I tried to imagine what they would be like ... When I saw a real diamond in a lady's ring one day I was so disappointed I cried. Of course, it was very lovely but it wasn't my idea of a diamond."
"She came awake, stomach rumbling, and opened her eyes to see a plate being held right under her nose. When she reached for it, Shane snatched it back. 'Nuh-uh. Mine.''Share!' she demanded.'Man, you are one grabby girlfriend.'She grinned. It always made her feel so fiercly warm inside to hear him say that- the girlfriend part, not the grabby part. 'If you love me, you'll give me a taco.''Seriously? That's all you got? What about you'll do sexy, illegal things to me for a taco?''Not for a taco,' she said. 'I'm not cheap.''They're brisket tacos.''Now you're talking."
"He seems to be attracting religions the way a dog attracts fleas."
"We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace."
"You couldn't be romantic if your life depended on it." "You know what's lucky? Most bad guys don't ask you to be romantic on command, so that probably won't matter."
"You can make the best of it or you can let it get the best of you. Those are your two choices."
"People told her she hadn't changed much, in a tone which hinted they were surprised and a little disappointed she hadn't."
"Are you all right?" The question surprised Jess, and it broke through his black shell enough to make him throw a look at his friend. "No." I didn't think you were. Everyone wants you to be. That must be worse, that they think you should be fine."
"The acknowledgement of having suffered evil is the greatest step forward in mental health."
"I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet," scoffed Marilla. "You'll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put to your lessons. Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse."
"Nobody really wants to be your friend when they discover that you work with dead people."
"If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure."
"No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do too badly by one another, we did as well as most."
"Appeasers will always try to get the least dangerous person to bend to the most dangerous person. This is one of the main problems in dysfunctional relationships. The more mature and rational you are the more you are victimized because, they are aware that you're not going to be as aggressive, destructive, or possibly as abusive and so you are the one who has to bend. You're the one who has to change and this constant rapping of rational people's souls around the prickly irrationalities of other people are what appeasers are constantly doing."
"Living in the past is a conscious or an unconscious choice made through a connection to the past."
"Point being that you don't have to get too worked up about us, dear educated minds. You don't have to think of us as real girls, real flesh and blood, real pain, real injustice. That might be too upsetting. Just discard the sordid part. Consider us pure symbol. We're no more real than money."
"Any human companionship, even the dearest and most perfect, would have been alien to her then. She was sufficient unto herself, needing not love nor comradeship nor any human emotion to round out her felicity. Such moments come rarely in any life, but when they do come they are inexpressibly wonderful - as if the finite were for a second infinity - as if humanity were for a space uplifted into divinity - as if all ugliness had vanished, leaving only flawless beauty."
"Living in the past is like choosing to cling to a chronic illness."
"Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control."
"Nothing here is like fighting vampires,' I said. 'It's more like fighting smoke. I think I liked it when I had an actual enemy to face.''Oh, don't worry, you have some. We just haven't seen them yet,' Jesse said. 'But we will. And wham we do...' She showed fang, just a flash; anybody who happened to catch a glimpse would have doubted their sanity, especially since the teeth disappeared in a flash. 'When we do, we'll settle this Morganville style."
"We compose our life in stories we tell ourselves."
"It's not the win that matters so much as recognizing and respecting its value."
"What is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it no more than to shine at practicalities - the getting of food, clothing and shelter? Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net of there's so little fish to catch?"
"She needs you for more than just protection. It's how it works. You want the strong girl, you understand that she's with you because she wants to be. Not because she has to be. You know that, right?"
"Perhaps the greatest utopia would be if we could all realize that no utopia is possible; no place to run, no place to hide, just take care of business here and now."
"Being asked what animal you'd like to be is a trick question; you're already an animal."
"But only a person in the depths of despair neglected to look beyond winter to the spring that inevitably followed, bringing back color and life and hope."
"To be a good model, I'd need a lot more confidence... and more confidence to be more bare."
"I am sure that in Canada the people appreciate this principle, and the general intelligence which prevails over that country is such that I am sure there is no danger of a reactionary policy ever finding a response in the hearts of any considerable number of our people."
"If you're an actor, and you've thought your way into the part, then you're character portrayal will have authority..."
"We will never have a perfect world, but it's not romantic or naA ve to work toward a better one."
"He hung up on her. She'd just been hung up on by a disembodied brain in a jar. Fantastic."
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