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Quotes by Canadian Authors
"I want for myself what I want for other women, absolute equality."
"The essence of a government health care system - for people who have never lived under it and don't know - is waiting, waiting, waiting. You wait for everything. You wait for years for operations that are routine in America."
"Nobody's a natural. You work hard to get good and then work to get better. It's hard to stay on top."
"My opinions about human nature are shared by many psychologists, linguists, and biologists, not to mention philosophers and scholars going back centuries."
"Write in a disciplined manner, but write in a way that is natural to the individual's thought processes."
"Anne laughed."I don't want sunbursts or marble halls, I just want you."
"Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference."
"Never attribute to malice, that which can be reasonably explained by stupidity."
"But I have already told the beginning, so right now it's the middle. And Zeb is in the middle of the story about Zeb. He is in the middle of his own story.I am not in this part of the story; it hasn't come to the part with me. But I'm waiting, far off in the future. I'm waiting for the story of Zeb to join up with mine. The story of Toby. The story I am in right now, with you."
"I went on and was still able to play some good hockey."
"In the event of a communication breakdown, decide whether you will dwell in the negative or rise above the angst and turmoil in a firm, positive manner and encourage all parties to listen and be heard."
"I've come home in love with loneliness."
"I don't know, I don't want to talk as much. (...) It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like treasures. I don't like to have them laughed at or wondered over."
"Both Neil and I had done solo projects where we were the boss and I just thought that if he was willing to get into it, it would really be a good experience for him."
"You can, and you will. If you're going to carry any belief, carry one that empowers you. Believe in your unlimited potential."
"Royalty is either going to do very well with cloning, or it's going to disappear completely."
"Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it really isn't about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing."
"Sending everything they touch to the grave is what they do, but they don't see it as a grave mistake, yet."
"Alecto Sydney Steele, an entity of few words whom society managed to overlook as it rapidly dove into the 21st century. Everything about him, his interests, his friends, his own life, was constantly in danger of becoming an anachronism. And caught up in that mess was Mearth, not exactly evil in nature but just misunderstood. A very long time ago Alecto's life had been all incandescent sparkles and Kodachrome, but that was before the environmental movement changed Mearth from a perfectly nice and kind guardian, to a deranged and malevolent monster."
"The psychological components of war have not gone away-dominance, vengeance, callousness, tribalism, groupthink, self-deception."
"Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love.I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. That pain is like an axe that chops at my heart."
"It is a fact that all women contribute more to marriage than men; for the most part they have to change their place of living, their method of work, a great many women today changing their occupation entirely on marriage; and they must even change their name."
"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.'"
"I think if human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn't life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don't they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you'd meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to - like talking to dogs."
"The role of the federal government should be neutral toward culture just as it is toward religion."
"They'd crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn't. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comforted, not fully. Never again. Food was nutrition, little more. Breaths were sighs. And they knew something the rest didn't. They knew how lucky the rest of the world was."
"But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?"
"Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering the converse does. The brave who focus and all things good and all things beautiful to give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agent to bring the fullest night to all the world."
"A simplified Christmas isn't about circumstances as much as it is about focus."
"A bard's down-to-earth love: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red and when she walks, treads on the ground..."
"To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow? Can you shake that area of darkness that clings to you, always shaped like you, as if constantly to remind you of yourself? You can't. This shadow is doubt. And it goes wherever you go as long as you stay in the sun. And who wouldn't want to be in the sun?"
"Bang. You're dead.'Gamache swung around, but had recognised the voice an instant after he'd begun to turn.'You're a sneak, Jean Guy. I'm going to have to put a cow bell on you.''Not again.' It wasn't often he could get the drop on the chief. But Beauvoir had begun to worry. Suppose he snuck up on Gamache sometime and he had a heart attack? It would certainly take the fun out of it."
"The big will get bigger; the small will get wiped out."
"An odd thing souvenir-hunting: now becomes then even while it is still now."
"A lot of what we know to be history isn't it serves a purpose. Events are exaggerated, heroes fabricated, goals are rewritten to appear more noble than they actually were. All to manipulate public opinion, to manufacture a common purpose or enemy. And the cornerstone of a really great movement? A powerful symbol. Take away or tarnish that and everything starts to crumble, everything's questioned."
"I do not write by any set time schedule. I realize there are many writers who follow a daily regime where they arise at 6:00 a.m., do some sort of exercise, eat breakfast and then sit down and produce words for a three to four hour period."
"I wanted the press to become something of a movement. Not a movement committed to a particular "ism," but a gathering together of writers with an aesthetic approach to literature and with a lust for excellence."
"Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father's heart."
"Architecture doesn't come from theory. You don't think your way through a building."
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