Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 125

When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.
William Gibson
Miss Mitchell had a lovely voice, it was true, but Miss Mitchell speaking Italian was something celestial. Her ruby mouth opening and closing, the delicate way she almost sang the words, her tongue peeking out to wet her lips from time to time...Professor Emerson had to remind himself to close his mouth after it had dropped open.
Sylvain Reynard
Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.
Alberto Manguel
When you do what's important now for you, you create a past that leaves you ready to handle the present. By default, the future is taking care of itself as you make decisions that are acceptable to you no matter what happens tomorrow.
John Kuypers
The body grows slowly and steadily but the soul grows by leaps and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour.
L.M. Montgomery
Do you want to have sex? I think we should have sex. CASUAL sex.
Bryan Lee O'Malley
The Self says ‘I AM’–as in the very grand sayings of Christ, especially in the Gospel of John, in which he says in the state of onenenss with Yahweh (which in Hebrew means ‘I AM’), I AM is the way and the truth and the life–but the ego says ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that,’ thus attaching itself only to a small portion of the Vastness. (62)
Ravi Ravindra
Disturbed to her very soul, Finley could only shake her head. "You ask too much."A crooked grin curved his mouth. "Too much? You strange and wonderful girl, that is the least I'll ask of you.
Kady Cross
First things first, though, I thought, and headed straight for the liquor cabinet. Times like this call for straight scotch, no rocks.
Susan Toy
I’m not sure this is what we bargained for, boy. We expected the girl to be attractive.”If I hadn’t been so terrified, I would have been insulted.
Danielle L. Jensen
Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution; this gives you a 1,000 percent Return on Energy!
Brian Tracy
Religious people today, compartmentalize their attitude to the Bible. They pay it lip service as a symbol of morality while getting their actual morality from more modern principles.
Steven Pinker
You don't understand," Alecto replied vacantly. "It isn't that I want to die... I just don't want to exist.
Rebecca McNutt
He had a collection of science-fiction films on DVD and Blu-ray discs, and although he said he’d seen most of them before, Caitlin was surprised to discover how many of the cases were still shrink-wrapped. “Why’d you buy them if you weren’t going to watch them?” she asked. He looked at the tall, thin cabinets that contained the movies and seemed to ponder the question. “My childhood was on sale,” he said at last, “so I bought it.
Robert J. Sawyer
Nani’s allegiance is to her angerandangerruns deeper than blood and skin.It’s set in boneand bone, once broken,neverheals the same.
Holly Bodger
Well, that's not true. I need to work for a living.”“No, that's not true. You think you need to work like this because that's what you've been told. That is merely an idea put into your head. In actuality, you can walk away any time you want.
Dylan Callens
All men think that a woman walking alone at night is a whore.
Tamara Faith Berger
The life you have built around you is a reflection of what is within you. If you don't like what you see, go inside.
L.J Vanier
Every morning we get a chance to be different. A chance to change. A chance to be better. Your past is your past. Leave it there. Get on with the future part, honey
Nicole Williams
A lot of people who read my novel 'Smog City' ask me why I never killed off either of the two main characters. To be honest, it's because I've given them life. Not literally of course, but since I spent so much time developing and creating my characters, they've ended up with complex personalities, in fact they're almost sentient in a way, and to write them off as dead would be like killing a close friend to me.
Rebecca McNutt
The origin of innovation and entrepreneurship is a creative mindset
Michael Harris
The world has long ceased to be the author of your anguish.
R. Scott Bakker
Imagining that you are deep and complex, but others are simple, is one of the primary signs of malignant selfishness.
Stefan Molyneux
When the course of experience made me see that there is no saviour and no special grace, no remission beyond the human, that pain is to be endured and fades, if it fades, only with time, then God became nothing to me but a dyslexic dog, with neither bark nor bite.
Yann Martel
...I remember your profile in darkness outlined by stars ...
John Geddes
She felt her strong young body that she had never appreciated when she had it, constantly worrying that she didn't meet standards of beauty and not understanding how standards of health were so much more important.
Jo Walton
she's alone but never lonelyshe's been through a lot but never bittershe's loved and lost but keeps on lovingshe lives in the present because that's all there is right now...
Iva Ursano
Attachment to the hurt is the root of all suffering.
Iva Ursano
I’ve seen how cigarettes went from being advertised in every type of media to being something found to be deadly… they can’t kill me no matter how many of them I smoke but I’ve seen humans die from smoking them… if I were you I would stop smoking them.”“Why should I? You smoke ‘em all the time, you chain-smoke cigarettes,” Mandy pointed out.“Yeah, I started doing that back in the Sixties… for reasons you likely saw on those VHS tapes… but I’m not a person, I’m Pollution, things like that aren’t dangerous to me but they are to you,” Alecto told her. “It’s not a good idea.
Rebecca McNutt
you want to be angry but you can’t stop looking and when you look you love and when you love the entire world unfolds around you
Sina Queyras
We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive; love or grief or despair or hatred is what drives us on. We'll spy relentlessly on the dead; we'll open their letters, we'll read their journals, we'll go through their trash, hoping for a hint, a final word, an explanation, from those who have deserted us--who've left us holding the bag, which is often a good deal emptier than we'd supposed.
Margaret Atwood
I you can't see anything beautiful about yourself, get a better mirror. Look a little closer, stare a little longer. Because there is something inside you that made you keep trying despite everyone who told you to quit. You built a cast around your broken heart and signed it yourself, you signed it THEY WERE WRONG.
Shane L. Koyczan
Upon achieving a lifelong dream, I thought, this is the way to live your life -- in the moment, and to the fullest.
Lorii Myers
The mind delights in making connections.
Nicholas Boothman
I'm just sorry. Sorry that there won't be any more camping trips for kids or rock bands or even new books to read. No more movies or fresh bags of popcorn. It really sucks when you think about it. Of course, there is the possibility that we might be able to win this war, but not for a very long time. Probably longer than you and I will ever exist in this world.""I try not to think about it.""Sometimes it's all I ever think about.
Jeyn Roberts
I think it is because I have a habit, when I am bored or disgusted with people of stepping suddenly into my own world and shutting the door. People resent this -- I suppose it is only natural to resent a door being shut in your face. They call it slyness when it is only self-defense.
L.M. Montgomery
I looked like a hipster who broke his arm at a Vampire Weekend concert or some shit like that.
Karina Halle
Just then his state of being was so curious that he was compelled , himself, to see it -- eager, grieving, fantastic, dangerous, crazed and, to the point of death, "comical." It was enough to make a man pray to God to remove this great, bone-breaking burden of selfhood and self-development, give himself, a failure, back to the species for a primitive cure.
Saul Bellow
                And into the close and mirrored catacombs of sleepWe'll fall, and there in the faded light discover the bones,The dust, the bitter remains of someone who might have been                    Had we not taken his place.
Mark Strand
Sometimes I think I am a strange, strange creature -- something not of earth, nor yet of heaven, nor of hell. I think at times I am a little thing fallen on the earth by mistake: a thing thrown among foreign, unfitting elements, where every little door is closed -- every Why unanswered, and itself knows not where to lay its head. I feel a deadly certainty in some moments that the wild world contains not one moment of rest for me, that there will never be any rest, that my woman's-soul will go on asking long, long centuries after my woman's-body is laid in its grave.
Mary MacLane
What is even more astonishing is that the entire science of wayfinding is based on dead reckoning. You only know where you are by knowing precisely where you have been and how you got to where you are.
Wade Davis
A story is a garden you can carry in your pocket. The stories we tell ourselves and each other are for pleasure and refuge. Like gardens they are small places in a large world. But, Jinhua, we must never mistake the stories we tell for the truth.
Alexandra Curry
Different states of consciousness project different images of God–loving or vengeful or jealous, energetic or terrifying, and different images of God affect the nature and quality of our response to God. . . . The image or idea of God as wrathful and jealous will have a different effect than the image or the idea of God as loving. Similarly, whether God is regarded as male or female will have a significant impact on the culture. (29)
Ravi Ravindra
I hope I died honorably. I have a great deal to atone for. - Eler Nersal
Lynda Williams
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
James D. Nicoll
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
Margaret Atwood
Although the art world reveres the unconventional, it is rife with conformity. Artists make work that "looks like art" and behave in ways that enhance stereotypes. Curators pander to the expectations of their peers and their museum boards. Collectors run in herds to buy work by a handful of fashionable painters. Critics stick their finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing so as to "get it right". Originality is not always rewarded, but some people take real risks and innovate, which gives a raison d'être to the rest.
Sarah Thornton
Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of whatever you’re doing is as valuable as gold.
Elon Musk
...I always thought youth were idealists - now, I'm not so sure - I'm more idealistic now then at 17...
John Geddes
Determining who the members of your audience are is the most important piece in the business puzzle.
Cendrine Marrouat
I pulled the sheet off their faces. Their faces were black with coal dust and didn't look like anything was wrong with them except they were dirty. The both of them had smiles on their faces. I thought maybe one of them had told a joke just before they died and, pain and all, they both laughed and ended up with a smile. Probably not true but but it made me feel good to think about it like that, and when the Sister came in I asked her if I could clean their faces and she said, "no, certainly not!" but I said, "ah, c'mon, it's me brother n' father, I want to," and she looked at me and looked at me, and at last she said, "of course, of course, I'll get some soap and water."When the nun came back she helped me. Not doing it, but more like showing me how, and taking to me, saying things like "this is a very handsome man" and "you must have been proud of your brother" when I told her how Charlie Dave would fight for me, and "you're lucky you have another brother"; of course I was, but he was younger and might change, but she talked to me and made it all seem normal, the two of us standing over a dead face and cleaning the grit away. The only other thing I remember a nun ever saying to me was, "Mairead, you get to your seat, this minute!
Sheldon Currie
Do you know, Mrs. Allan, I'm thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so much." "True friendship is a very helpful thing indeed," said Mrs. Allan, "and we should have a very high ideal of it , and never sully it by any failure in truth and sincerity. I fear the name of friendship is often degraded to a kind of intimacy that had nothing of real friendship in it.
L.M. Montgomery
I didn't ask to be made a princess."This time all three of them laugh, although it is gentle enough."Who chooses their fate?" It is the third one, the tallest. "Who asks to be born into the times that are theirs?""Well, who accepts the world only as it comes to them?" she says, too quickly.
Guy Gavriel Kay
The "us versus them" mindset coupled with our social nature implies that we have an innate need to belong to clearly defined in-groups.
Gad Saad
Where do the words gowhen we have said them?
Margaret Atwood
As individuals they were each of them fallible, discordant as notes without harmony. But as a band they were something more, something perfect in its own intangible way
Nicholas Eames
To forgive is a gift of God that permits us to let go of our past hurts.
Jean Vanier
There's no weakness as great as false strength.
Stefan Molyneux
Later, they also found a camp of outlaws who, when offered the chance to join the rebel ranks, unsheathed their daggers and threatened to cut the three into tiny, bloody pieces and eat them for dinner. They too that as a firm no.
Morgan Rhodes
Wrangling the cat into the cage proved interesting, and Josie had several scratches before Clint bent down and let out a menacing growl. The cat took one look at him and with a disdainful sniff, turned to march into the cage.
Eve Langlais