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Quotes by Canadian Authors
"We live in an era with no historical precedents. History is no longer useful as a tool in helping us understand current changes."
"A fool believes that math adds up, but also believes that they can master luck."
"Burnt by the sunof your mouth, I'm unable to speak or paint you with words."
"Aunt Elizabeth said, 'Do you expect to attend many balls, if I may ask?' and I said, 'Yes, when I am rich and famous.' and Aunt Elizabeth said, 'Yes, when the moon is made of green cheese."
"Perhaps in actions I'm less of a man - but, oh the words - such lovely words..."
"Yes I understand your spells-your sex magic-at least, I know this: all lights dim when you walk in..."
"Do you know why we're all happy here, monsieur? Because it's the last house on the road."
"Come aboard if your destination is oblivion - it should be our next stop."
"I don't know how anyone gets anything done in cities. How can you live somewhere like London or New York, when there are 81 things to do every night? Awful. Give me solitude and space any time."
"Challenge yourself to do things you've never done before. Your success lies not in perfect outcomes, but in braving the courage, in believing in yourself enough to just try. There is absolutely no shame in making mistakes, or even falling on your face. It's all part of being alive and being a human being. Don't be discouraged to try again or to try something new. Keep expanding your experiences, keep growing. This life, this day is short and waiting for you to seize it! Carpe diem!"
"And Beauvoir knew then the man was a saint. He's been touched by any number of medical men and women. All healers, all well intentioned, some kind, some rough. All made it clear they wanted him to live, but none had made him feel that his life was precious, was worth saving, was worth something."
"I wasn't discriminating in my reading, and I'm still not. I read then primarily to be entertained, as I do now. And I'm not saying that apologetically: I feel that if you remove the initial gut response from reading - the delight or excitement or simply the enjoyment of being told a story - and try to concentrate on the meaning or the shape of the "message" first, you might as well give up, it's too much like all work and no play."
"Also I could hear Amanda's voice: Why are you being so weak? Love's never a fair trade. So Jimmy's tired of you, so what, there's guys all over the place like germs, and you can pick them like flowers and toss them away when they're wilted. But you have to act like you're having a spectacular time and every day's a party."
"Her voice was flat, in a way Myrna recognized from years of listening to people trying to rein in their emotions. To squash them down, flatten, them, and with them their words and their voices. Desperately trying to make the horrific sound mundane."
"We have entertained ourselves with the pornography of violence and inflamed passions that might otherwise have slumbered..."
"If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
"The photograph reverses the purpose of travel, which until now had been to encounter the strange and unfamiliar."
"No mean person is mean all the time. The whole point of being mean is to fluctuate so that you can hold out the hope for someone. So someone will hold out the hope that they're gonna catch you on the sunny side or that you're gonna be nice this time. The tyranny is inconsistency. Somebody thats consistently mean is something that is pretty easy to sort out. The reality is that the meanest people can be wonderful sometimes. That's the whole point of meanness because otherwise it's too obvious. It's the niceness that gets you trapped in the dysfunction. That is the problem and so the fact that you have this belief that there is hope in the relationship is foundational to the dysfunction."
"The sun was up, the room already too warm. Light filtered in through the net curtains, hanging suspended in the air, sediment in a pond. My head felt like a sack of pulp. Still in my nightgown, damp from some fright I'd pushed aside like foliage, I pulled myself up and out of my tangled bed, then forced myself through the usual dawn rituals - the ceremonies we perform to make ourselves look sane and acceptable to other people. The hair must be smoothed down after whatever apparitions have made it stand on end during the night, the expression of staring disbelief washed from the eyes. The teeth brushed, such as they are. God knows what bones I'd been gnawing in my sleep."
"Resiliency is not gender-, age-, or intellectually specific..."
"Alecto, have you noticed how downhill this little island is becoming?" Mandy questioned sadly. "All these organic food stores and yoga studios and cellular phone towers… Cape Breton was one of the only places left where it still had that nostalgic small town atmosphere but now… I've only been away for a year, how could things have changed so quickly? I mean, how can the world accept it?"
"C'est la vie," said Alecto, looking extremely tired as he stared out the window at the late November maple keys fluttering down from vibrantly red trees lining the streets on either side of the windshield.
"Cell phones are certainly not necessary, and "but I'm from the digital age, this is what everyone in my generation is doing!" isn't a very good excuse for being hooked on a glowing screen 24/7. In the 1960's every teen of the times was tripping on acid and running off to find themselves in communes and love buses. It was a fad, there was no excuse for it and it passed, just like I think that this generation's "cell phones are necessary for socialization" fad will eventually pass. What will it bring afterwards? I don't even want to know, but I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope that it isn't anything else digital."
"How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all."
"Haphazard actions don't bring results!"
"When you're hard and unyielding your words score me with lines - I hate lines - I want curves - curves are happy like a snowman ..."
"...and not out of fear or loneliness, but only to find myself again... for we have come too far my Life, to turn back now..."
"You don't need a calling to minister love..."
"If you always move in certainty, your writing will be flat - creativity is a rugged terrain..."
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