Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 121

Our job as writers is to be as curious as a child, to see things for the first time, and to never assume. We must always be willing to surrender our idea of the story to allow the larger story to emerge. We are seeking to understand the nature of things, the underlying forces at work.
Alan Watt
In the world of so-called villains, what we need is not another hero. What we need is to stop the influx of people who dress themselves as menaces and proceed to harm others.
Vironika Tugaleva
Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.
Brian Tracy
Sons branch out but one woman leads to another.
Margaret Atwood
Many a man in love with a dimple makes a mistake of marrying the whole girl.
Stephen Leacock
He didn't ask "Where will you spend eternity?" as religious the-end-is-near picketers did but rather, "With what, in this modern democracy, will you meet the demands of your soul?
Saul Bellow
There is a tendency for humans to consciously see what they wish to see. They literally have difficulty seeing things with negative connotations while seeing with increasing ease items that are positive. For example, words that evoke anxiety, either because of an individual's personal history or because of experimental manipulation, require greater illumination before first being perceived.
Lionel Tiger
Life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship.
William Paul Young
I have to wonder if you're not being slightly naive here. I mean, are you saying that you want nothing for people? You have no motives? Everybody has motives. Name the person, the circumstances, I'll name the motive. Even saints have motives -- to feel like saints, probably. ... But still, the point of any relationship is obtaining something from another person.
Tom Rachman
Not necessarily conscription but conscription if necessary.
William Lyon Mackenzie King
I can't help thinking that caring possibly is the riskiest enterprise known to man. But how stop caring?
Charlotte Vale Allen
Milena's eyes seemed to go hot and heavy. Praise made her heartsick; she was so unused to it, and needed it so badly.
Geoff Ryman
Everyone loves a girl who can rise to a crisis.
Allan Dare Pearce
—¿Por qué sigues creyendo en Dios? ¿No estás enfadada con Él por todas las cosas malas que te han pasado?Ella interrumpió lo que estaba haciendo y se volvió hacia él. Gabriel parecía muy infeliz.—A todo el mundo le pasan cosas malas. ¿Por qué iba a ser yo distinta a los demás?—Porque eres buena.Ella se miró las manos.—El universo no se basa en la magia. No hay unas reglas para las personas buenas y otras para las personas malas. Todo el mundo sufre en un momento u otro. Lo importante es lo que haces con tu dolor, ¿no crees?
Sylvain Reynard
The sun's rays don't bother me. No they cast down such a wonderful heat. Masking beauty, by a terrible fate.
Sara Quin
As she rounded a corner one of her favourite songs came on the radio, and sunlight filtered through the trees the way it does with lace curtains, reminding her of her grandmother, and tears began to slide down her cheeks. Not for her grandmother, who was then still very much among the living, but because she felt an enveloping happiness to be alive, a joy made stronger by the certainty that someday it would all come to an end. It overwhelmed her, made her pull the car to the side of the road. Afterwards she felt a little foolish, and never spoke to anyone about it. Now, however, she knows she wasn’t being foolish. She realizes that for no particular reason she stumbled into the core of what it is to be human. It’s a rare gift to understand that your life is wondrous, and that it won’t last forever.
Steven Galloway
For God’s sake, Helen, I stood in front of my peers and basically said, ‘Look, chaps, I can’t vote because all I can think about is kissing that brilliant woman who was just in here.’ And I don’t even bloody know if you still want me to kiss you.
Alexia Adams
Nowadays he doesn't think of his wife, though he knows he can turn around and evoke every move of her, describe any aspect of her, the weigh of her wrist on his heart during the night.
Michael Ondaatje
You are the average of the people you spend the most time with. And that’s why it’s not always where you are in life, but who you have by your side that matters most. Some people drain you and others provide soul food. Spend more time with nice people who are smart, driven and open-minded about personal growth and opportunity. There’s no need to rush into a relationship you are unsure of, or socialize with those who hold you back. Be sure to get in the company of those who feed your spirit, and give the gift of your absence to those who do not appreciate your presence.
John Geiger
Both men had made her feel as if she were the one who was at fault, a typically masculine reaction to a woman who was able to act independently of them.
Flora Kidd
If you want to be all like smart and adult about this shit then do the right thing. But if you want to do something fun and take a chance, then screw what anyone else thinks. Rock and roll, man!
Karina Halle
I took [Kate's] hand in mine, and felt her fingers squeeze back. And I thought: home. It took me completely by surprise. But I suppose that once you bid farewell to your first home, you're always looking for another—that place where you can feel happy and strong and at your best. For three years I'd called the Aurora home. But now that I lived in Paris, it was not the city itself that was home. It was Kate.
Kenneth Oppel
…hate's got to be a disease with me.
L.M. Montgomery
Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn't happen, but other planets.
Margaret Atwood
It doesn't matter if the glass is half full or half empty. I am gonna drink it through this crazy straw.
Joey Comeau
It is even possible to be a martyr for the Faith and yet not love Jesus Christ.
Oswald J. Smith
When you find someone you want to spend forever with you, you don't let them go, whether forever turns out to be a day or a year of fifty years. Don't let the fear of losing them keep you from loving them.
Nicole Williams
I fit perfectly within my vibration. I am wholly complete in the knowledge that I am who I am supposed to be!
Debbie A. Anderson
Okay, I know--my superpower--I'd be able to shoot lightening bolts out from my fingertips--great big knowledge network lightening bolts--and when a person was zapped by one of those bolts, they'd fall down on their knees and once on their knees, they'd be under water, in this place I saw once off the east coast of the Bahamas, a place where a billion electric blue fish swam up to me and made me a part of their school--and then they'd be up in the air, up in Manhattan, above the World Trade Center, with a flock of pigeons, flying amid the skyscrapers, and then--then what? And then they'd go blind, and then they'd be taken away--they'd feel homesick--more homesick than they'd felt in their entire life--so homesick they were throwing up--and they'd be abandoned, I don't know...in the middle of a harvested corn field in Missouri. And then they'd be able to see again, and from the edges of the field people would appear--everybody they'd known--and they'd be carrying Black Forest cakes and burning tiki lamps and boom boxes playing the same song, and they sky would turn into a sunset, the way it does in Walt Disney brochure, and the person I zapped would never be alone or isolated again.
Douglas Coupland
There is so much deep contradiction in my soul. Such deep longing for God - so deep that it is painful - a suffering continual - and yet not wanted by God - repulsed - empty - no faith - no love - no zeal. Souls hold no attraction - Heaven means nothing - to me it looks like an empty place - the thought of it means nothing to me and yet this torturing longing for God. Pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything. For I am only His - so He has every right over me. I am perfectly happy to be nobody even to God. . . .Your devoted child in J.C.M. Teresa
Brian Kolodiejchuk
It would be a remarkable life, if we live it in the same manner as we do once we find out we do not have much to live
Faisal Khosa
There was currant toast squishy with butter, caramel-marshmallow squares, strawberry boats oozing custard, chocolate exclairs that exploded with cream when the cats bit into them with their little white teeth and-- a special treat for Pleasant-- a pie made from thick slices of Bramley apple, with just the right amount of tangy in the tangy-sweet.
Anne Michaels
Well, I've seen porn!" Evan defends and Dan just looks at him. "Okay, captain Pornie, walk me through it," Dan challenges. "I'll be the pizza guy, and Jeff can be the plumber. You can be... hey, why don't you be the high-powered young executive?" Evan grins at him with a glint in his eye. "Okay, fine." He laces his fingers together and flexes them in front of him as if he's warming up. He sits back in chair and his eyes focus on the eaves of Jeff's roof then begins. "The young executive come home after a hard day...[five pages of detailed porn]"...and all fall asleep together on the executives huge bed. The End." Evan is pretty clearly proud of himself, and Dan really blame him. After an appreciative silence, Dan says, "Okay, yeah, so maybe there's some merit to the whole threesome thing.
Kate Sherwood
Never hear anything bad about Canada that's one thing - in fact I guess it's the only thing.
Walter Stewart
It made me sad when I caught myself pretending that everybody out there in cyberspace cared about what I thought, when really nobody gives a shit. And when I multiplied that sad feeling by all the millions of people in their lonely little rooms, furiously writing and posting to their lonely little pages that nobody has time to read because they’re all so busy writing and posting, it kind of broke my heart.
Ruth Ozeki
A good golfer’s métier is his or her golfing skill.A great golfer’s métier is his or her golfing skill, coupled with the mastery of good sportsmanship, rendering him or her an ambassador for the sport.
Lorii Myers
There are large moments in life; but sometimes it is the small moments - the casual moments - that change everything. The second's absent wandering of attention before an accident. The choice to take one road, instead of another.
Simone St. James
In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of self-serving rules that pretend to replace or translate those of the shapeless universe beyond.
Alberto Manguel
With the arrival of electric technology, man has extended, or set outside himself, a live model of the central nervous system itself. To the degree that this is so, it is a development that suggests a desperate suicidal autoamputation, as if the central nervous system could no longer depend on the physical organs to be protective buffers against the slings and arrows of outrageous mechanism.
Marshall McLuhan
One of the most frequent sins of omission is the failure to get adequate rest.
James MacDonald
I would rather believe God doesn't exist than believe he doesn't care.
Eric Wilson
Friendship is a special kind of love. More than endless, more than true. When friends parted ways no matter the distance, expect them to keep coming back to you.
John K.
To honor the self is to be willing to think independently, to live by our own mind, and to have the courage of our own perceptions.
Nathaniel Branden
We make, see, and love films, not digitals. To convert all of our movies, home videos, theaters, photographs and television to digital would be like telling a painter to throw away his brushes and canvas for an I-Pad. Celluloid isn't just nostalgic, it's an art form and, like it or not, it's superior to digital. It lasts much longer, it provides grain and brighter colors, and it takes more effort so that it produces something wonderful. With the inferior binary codes, pixels and untested shelf-life of digital files, plus the fact that these days anyone with a digital camera, even a two-year-old, can make a video and pollute the world with self-photography and cat pictures, film has a lot more integrity and worth than digital.
Rebecca McNutt
Whatever you do, it will be a path. Life does not work like a light switch - on/off, fat/skinny, miserable/happy, crazy/sane. All things take time, patience, and practice. Anyone who tells you different is profiting off your fearful ignorance of the truth.
Vironika Tugaleva
And tonight Mary could taste bitterness going down like a nut, settling in her stomach. It planted itself, put down roots, and began to grow, nourished on her dark blood.
Emma Donoghue
Knowledge is responsibility, which is why people resist knowledge.
Stefan Molyneux
Deep in our hearts there is a call to live in communion with others, a call to love, to create, to risk. But there is also that radical feeling of our poverty when faced with human misery. I am afraid to give myself. I have constructed a world of security around me...so many so-called interests which keep me from communing with others...I want to, but cannot. So many things seem to prevent me from loving and I feel them in my inmost being...so many defences and fears. I risk losing hope. I risk entering into a world of sadness and I begin to doubt myself. I have doubts about others. I doubt the value of my presence. I doubt everything.This is our human condition. We want so much but we feel incapable. We believe in love but where is it? There are so many obstacles to break through within ourselves in order to become free and to become present to others; to their misery and to their person.Our hope is to become freer each day in order to accept others, to be fully present to them. That is our hope. It is only in that way we will be able to give life. Come, Holy Spirit, give us hearts of peace and warmth which can serve as a refuge for those who suffer. Come, help us to be present one to another.
Jean Vanier
We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.
André Berthiaume
A snowflake is probably quite unconscious of forming a crystal, but what it does may be worth study even if we are willing to leave its inner mental processes alone.
Northrop Frye
Smile for the camera, pretty little Sydney Tar Ponds.
Rebecca McNutt
Thoughts become things. If you see it in your mind, you will hold it in your hand." - Bob Proctor
Bob Proctor
Don't overthink things. Sometimes you can convince your head not to listen to your heart. Those are the decisions you regret for the rest of your life." Faith Barnett From Texas Tangle
Leah Braemel
...it's not the stories - it's the pain and the joy and the people who stay with you long after the stories are told ...
John Geddes
Women are going to form a chain, a greater sisterhood than the world has ever known.
Nellie L. McClung
Loghain shook his head in disbelief. "Maker's breath, man, aren't you suppose to have some dignity? Somewhere?""Me? Dignity?""Being the supposed future King and such.""I think Rowan took my dignity."She snorted derisively, folding her arms. "There was nothing else worth having.
David Gaider
I know that through the grace of God I am the founder of Manitoba.
Louis Riel
If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, she'd be thinking, try jumping off the roof: death's a sure-fire method for stopping time.
Margaret Atwood
...writers, like priests, should have compassion...and a sensitivity to pain...
John Geddes
‎All my stupid little thoughts beget stupid little thoughts, rampantly speculating every possible outcome of every possible situation until they're all done to death and none of them could ever be true.
Bryan Lee O'Malley