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Quotes by Canadian Authors
"A writer's age at the time of a work's composition is never irrelevant."
"I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her outcome, the result of the life she once lived headlong; whereas she, if she can be said to exist at all, is composed only of what I remember. I have the better view - I can see her clearly, most of the time. But even if she knew enough to look, she can't see me at all."
"Never be disappointing - you may wound me, but you must never be disappointing..."
"It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical."
"Sometimes even the imagination lets one down."
"If there's more that you can do, then do it. If there's not more that you can do, then be content with what you're doing. But if there is despair, the despair can only be that you can do more. Because when you're doing as much as you can do, you will not feel despair. Because despair is the gap between what you could be doing and what you are doing."
"As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our day."
"Of course there are mothers,squeezing their breastsdry, pawning their bodies,shedding teeth for their children,or that's our fond belief.But remember - Hanseland Gretel were dumped in the forestbecause their parents were starving."
"I'm not going to have a husband anyway," said Laura. "I'm going to live by myself in the garage."
"Here the children have a custom. After the celebration of evil they take those vacant heads that shone once with such anguish and glee and throw them over the bridge, watching the smash, orange, as they hit below, We were standing underneath when you told it. People do that with themselves when they are finished, light scooped out. He landed here, you said, marking it with your foot.You wouldn't do it that way, empty, you wouldn't wait, you would jump with the light still in you."
"Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I'll be dead,' you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar."
"There is no way for the American economic system to function without advertising. There is no other way to communicate enough information about enough products to enough people with enough speed."
"Make your goals big and broad enough so that they never become answered prayers and boomerang to curse you."
"Claire said. "I might be able to get him to stop. "Who, crazy dude? Maybe. Or he might pull your head off, Shane said. "I kind of worry.She couldn't help but smile. "Yeah?"A little bit."That's nice.He studied her, and returned the smile. "Yeah, he said. "Kind of is, actually."
"Thinking you're immortal is weirdly similar to being immortal."
"Historical definition of a country's borders... "...here's where my murder geography ends and your murder geography begins, at least until I get more murderers to expand my murder-fest."
"There is nothing that is going to make people hate you more, and love you more, than telling the truth."
"You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better."
"She's just jealous, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But it's not, it's the worst, it's the worst feeling there is - incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and focused and hard as glass, like a view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness."
"You're such a great liar when you lie to yourself."
"Three Pines wasn't on any tourist map, being too far off any main or even secondary road. Like Narnia, it was generally found unexpectedly and with a degree of surprise that such an elderly village should have been hiding in this valley all along. Anyone fortunate enough to find it once usually found their way back."
"Black is the absence of all color. White is the presence of all colors. I suppose life must be one or the other. On the whole, though, I think I would prefer color to its absence. But then black does add depth and texture to color. Perhaps certain shades of gray are necessary to a complete palette. Even unrelieved black. Ah, a deep philosophical question. Is black necessary to life, even a happy life? Could we ever be happy if we did not at least occasionally experience misery?"
"And once again, work is providing us with a comforting sense of normalcy-living and working inside of coding's predictably segmented time/space. Simply grinding away at something makes life feel stable, even though the external particulars of life (like our pay checks, our office, and so forth) are, at best, random."
"People do understand the language of the heart, you know, even if the head does not always comprehend it."
"Don't just to avoid criticism. If you do nothing, you will be nothing. If you do only the parts you really love, you will also be nothing. It takes what it takes. It takes all of it. Own it, accept it, embrace it and do it. Want all of what you want!"
"Mental anguish always results from the avoidance of legitimate suffering."
"Gamache watched the old poet. He knew what was looming behind the Mountain. What crushed all before it. The thing the Hermit most feared. The Mountain most feared.Conscience....Which is why, Gamache knew, it was vital to be aware of actions in the present. Because the present became the past, and the past grew. And got up, and followed you.And found you ...Who wouldn't be afraid of this?"
"A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you."
"Find your focus by seeking all that is good in your life."
"Once I saw you in moonlight and I can tell you - the silvery dust of the stars doesn't shimmer like you..."
"We've let go of so many things, but never each other's hand ..."
"Almost all heroism is designed to make you inert by placing it in a context that you can't possibly act on."
"Don't let the opportunity pass you by. Act! Do something now. Some chances never come again. Seize the moment. Seize the day! Live to the fullest. Live to YOUR fullest potential."
"Yes I pay taxes... There are no ethics in the face of coercion, that is blaming the victim. Focus on the man with the gun, not the man in the crosshairs trying to survive."
"You go back to liberate the captives and sadly realize, some want to remain tied down in the cave..."
"Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along."
"I've had maybe 20 jobs, big and small, and I've never hated any of them. At the same time, the moment the learning curve flattened, I was out of there."
"Antipathy, dissimilarity of views, hate, contempt, can accompany true love."
"For the most part, people strenuously resist any redefinition of morality, because it shakes them to the very core of their being to think that in pursuing virtue they may have been feeding vice, or in fighting vice they may have in fact been fighting virtue."
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