Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 132

The Zodiac had rearranged itself into a precise grid of bright points with luminous tails. It was as though the whole planet had been caught in some great closing net, the knots of its mesh aglow with St. Elmo's fire. It was beautiful. It was terrifying.
Peter Watts
So, if this were indeed my Final Hour, these would be my words to you. I would not claim to pass on any secret of life, for there is none, or any wisdom except the passionate plea of caring ... Try to feel, in your heart's core, the reality of others. This is the most painful thing in the world, probably, and the most necessary. In times of personal adversity, know that you are not alone. Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all of your fellow humans everywhere in the world. Know that your commitment is above all to life itself.
Margaret Laurence
There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
No intelligence system can predict what a government will do if it doesn't know itself.
J. K. Galbraith
Women who set a low value on themselves make life hard for all women.
Nellie McClung
Childhood is the most valuable thing that's taken away from you in life, if you think about it.
Heather O'Neill
Stories are there to entertain, preserve history, or serve a societal purpose of some kind.
Sylvain Neuvel
Not all broken things need to be fixed.
Iva Ursano
She was young and alive, untouchable. Why did she want to go?
Courtney Summers
I checked my words carefully. Words more powerful than atom bombs and more cutting than AK-47s. People are fragile and words, not bullets will break them, and once they break every part of them spills out. Their soul, spirit, identity, ugliness, and their beauty. It’s all there, right in front of you if you know where to look. Most people see the ugly and I didn't want to become that. I thought I looked for beauty but then wondered why I often say such ugly things.
Bruce Crown
If you cannot create, then buy a company that can. In particular, the large corporations buy small, personnally owned companies that have made breakthroughs in particular areas. They are buying creativity, though the immediate rush this produces doesn't last long. Once integrated into an administrative atmosphere, the creativity is sucked out of them.(IV - From Managers and Speculators to Growth)
John Ralston Saul
Just because a relationship ends, it doesn't mean it's not worth having.
Sarah Mlynowski
Language-lovers know that there is a word for every fear. Are you afraid of wine? Then you have oenophobia. Tremulous about train travel? You suffer from siderodromophobia. Having misgivings about your mother-in-law is pentheraphobia, and being petrified of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth is arachibutyrophobia. And then there’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s affliction, the fear of fear itself, or phobophobia.
Steven Pinker
Come here, let me share a bit of wisdom with you.Have you given much thought to our mortal condition?Probably not. Why would you? Well, listen.There's no one alivewho can say if he will be tomorrow.Our fate moves invisibly! A mystery.No one can teach it, no one can grasp it.Accept this! Cheer up! Have a drink!You can let the rest go. Am I making sense?I think so. How about a drink.Put on a garland. I'm surethe happy splash of wine will cure your mood.We're all mortal you know. Think mortal.Because my theory is, there's no such thing as life,
Anne Carson
Least said,soonest mended," Toby quipped, quoting a saying Jess often used.
Jean Little
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you cannot have an opinion.
Susan Oakey-Baker
Looking with eyes of love is about not only looking, but seeing.
Vironika Tugaleva
Are you sure you don’t have a crazy hairy grandmother in your family?
Vivi Anna
So I placed my heart under lock and key To take some time, and take care of me But I turn around and you're standing here
Deborah Cox
No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors.
L.M. Montgomery
But the coconut is also a symbol of resilience, Samar. Even in the conditions where there's very little nourishment and even less nurturance, it flourishes, growing taller than most of the plants around it.
Neesha Meminger
It's a good day for Kokomo
Michael Harris
If I had echolocation I could map out the terrain of ab muscles through sheer force of will. His cut body is meant to be relief mapped the way Braille is meant to be read. With my fingertips.
Julia Kent
there are NO rules, merely suggestions
Keri Smith
What his uncle does not understand is that in walking backwards, his back to the world, his back to God, he is not grieving. He is objecting. Because when everything cherished by you in life has been taken away, what else is there to do but object?
Yann Martel
On Marie's eight visit, Raymond met her at the airport with a skinny woman he said was his wife. She had dark-blond hair and one of those unset permanents, all corkscrews. Marie looked at her, and looked away. Raymond explained that he had moved back to Hollywood North. Marie said she didn't care, as long as she had somewhere to lay her head.They left the terminal in silence. Outside, she said, "What's this car? Japanese? Your father liked a Buick.""It belongs to Mimi," he said.Marie got in front, next to Raymond, and the skinny woman climbed in behind. Marie said to Raymond, in French, "You haven't told me her name.""Well, I have, of course. I introduced you. Mimi.""Mimi isn't a name.""It's her's," he said."It can't be. It's always short for something - for Michele. Did you ever hear of a Saint Mimi? She's not a divorced woman, is she? You were married in church?""In a kind of church," he said. "She belongs to a Christian movement."Marie knew what that meant: pagan rites.
Mavis Gallant
Your biggest opportunity probably lies under your own feet, in your current job, industry, education, experience or interests.
Brian Tracy
People are unhappy when they get something too easily. You have to sweat--that's the only moral they know.
Dany Laferrière
We are primarily the products of thinking that happens below the level of awareness.
David Brooks
How is it that disappointment arrives as soon as what you have desired for so long steps over the threshold? It’s like finding the end of your wedding train dragging behind in the mud.
Camilla Gibb
A brave action is often followed by grief. Do not let my resistance to grief stop the brave action.
Alanis Morissette
Grace is amazing #blessed
Grace McCarthy
The sky above the island was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel—which is to say it was a bright, cheery blue.
Robert J. Sawyer
Because, life's too short, my friends. Let's squeeze in as many laughs as we can get.
Neil Pasricha
Love comes from within, respect comes from within, acceptance comes from within, forgiveness comes from within; reach inside for Your Truth and find your Royalty.
Akiroq Brost
Haphazard actions don’t bring results!
Lorii Myers
Sustainability before ambition. Okal Rel.
Lynda Williams
His shrill cries flood the forest like light engulfing a silhouette.
Nelou Keramati
My mother may no longer be (if she ever was) a mast to which I can rope myself. But I fear the loss of Lesley. Without her observance, and her sturdy presence, I would feel windblown.
Trevor Cole
In order to live in the present, we have to learn how to feel safe even when a situation feels threatening to us.
John Kuypers
Trust me. What a phrase. Is it a phrase or an idiom? I was never a wordsmith and I was too far along in life to even attempt to tackle a problem as complicated as words. Do writers struggle as much with words as a painter does with his paint and his brush?“Okay,” it is impossible not to trust a beautiful woman. Even macho noir anti-heroes who talk about staying out of trouble and doin’ nothin’ for nobody always get sucked into intricate snares set for them by beautiful women… I would not be an exception.
Bruce Crown
Perhaps, deep down inside that rugged shell of yours, there is a little girl desperately waiting for her Prince Charming to propose.""Of course there is. Only until now, I'd been pretty successful at keeping that little brat's mouth shut.
Sylvain Neuvel
There isn't an end point to excellence where you have it and you can stop. Being your best self means keeping on trying.
Jo Walton
Creosote made Mandy think of the thrill of rushing through a garden sprinkler as a kid, of playing washer toss in the backyard, of spending nights in the neighbors’ huge in-ground swimming pool when she was twelve, throwing glow sticks in the turquoise water during Canada Day block parties. She thought of Jud for a moment, how he’d loved doing all those things when he was a kid, but how, as he got older, it was all about popularity, sports, a life of illusion… and without warning, a totally different kind of memory filled her mind – the dull feeling of her head hitting the concrete walls near the wood shop at her old high school, the sounds of kids laughing, the sharp smell of sawdust, the buzzing of electric sanders nearby, the sound of Jud laughing while he beat her up… without realizing it, she’d started crying noiselessly.
Rebecca McNutt
Good editorial writing has less to do with winning an argument, since the other side is mostly not listening, than with telling the guys on your side how they ought to sound when they're arguing.
Adam Gopnik
He didn’t remember the very first time he actually died very well. It wasn’t as bad as remediation, but he remembered being afraid and worried… and when he found himself alive again a few hours later with Mearth’s wild green eyes peering down at him, he remembered still being afraid and worried. It was strange, he thought, to be afraid of being alive… but being alive was worse than being dead in his mind.
Rebecca McNutt
There is a passion for perfection which you will rarely see fully developed but you may note this fact that in successful lives it is never wholly lacking.
Bliss Carman
God, how I hate the fact that I know this stuff. It only proves that it is possible to learn by osmosis.
Natalie Blitt
Her anger at the young woman's stubbornness quickly prompted recollections of all the times she'd found herself on one side or another of these meaningless, bigoted demarcations; all the times she'd been made to feel alien to some stranger's expectation of what constituted the right and normal world---the color of her skin, the ethnicity of the man she'd chosen to marry, even her tomboy daughter.
Omar El Akkad
The whole point of international terrorism is to shock the world with the most horrific spectacle imaginable.
Steven Pinker
A house from which nobody ever went away without feeling better in some way. A house in which there was always laughter.
L.M. Montgomery
Fear is the original sin,” suddenly said a still, small voice away back—back—back of Valancy’s consciousness. “Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.”Valancy stood up. She was still in the clutches of fear, but her soul was her own again. She would not be false to that inner voice.
L.M. Montgomery
When you begin to walk your own journey, to have your own unique conversation, you will naturally stop feeling envious of others. Not because you’ll realize your desires are different from theirs, but because they are so similar. You’ll discover the difference between doing well and pretending to do well, between being happy and pretending to be happy, between healthy relationships and staged ones. You’ll see just how many obstacles lie on any path. You’ll realize that it takes the same amount of effort to work on building up the quality of the conversations in your life as it does to broadcast to the public, constantly, that those conversations are already perfect. You can either build up the mask or build up the authentic self. And you, brave and beautiful you, will make the right choice eventually. Be it now or on your deathbed. We all realize soon enough.
Vironika Tugaleva
I can't remember what I really felt. Maybe nothing happened, maybe these emotions I remember are not the right emotions.
Margaret Atwood
New York makes one think of the collapse of civilization, about Sodom and Gomorrah, the end of the world. The end wouldn't come as a surprise here. Many people already bank on it.
Saul Bellow
Abinia,” he said, pointing toward the chickens, “you look at those birds. Some of them be brown, some of them be white and black. Do you think when they little chicks, those mamas and papas care about that?
Kathleen Grissom
I don't know how well I can fight, or run, or judge, but when the blade comes, I swear on whatever they want me to swear on, I'll stop it, with my body if nothing else.
Sebastien de Castell
Steadily, we are listening more to the intelligence of our hearts—and acting on that wisdom. And that's what spirituality is—an expression of Love.
Danielle LaPorte
I've developed into quite a swan. I'm one of those people that will probably look better and better as I get older - until I drop dead of beauty.
Rufus Wainwright
Logan's been one of Marietta's most eligible bachelors for too long. Ever since divorcing that useless ditz of a wife, we've all been watching waiting for him to dip his toes into the dating pool again. Nothing. Then, you show up and what happens? He dives straight into the deep end, without taking off his shoes." - Aunt Mabel to Samara
Roxanne Snopek