Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 14

Supernaturals is a broad term used to classify beings that include Elementals and numerous other creatures. Like what? The list is endless. Witches, Demons, Spirits, stuff like that. Wow, I commented dryly. It's like a giant Halloween party isn't it?
Alessia Dickson
...studies show that in general, optimists die ten years earlier than pessimists.""I find that hard to believe""Of course you do, you're an optimist. You have a misguided belief that things will go your way. You don't see the dangers till it's too late. Pessimists are more realistic. "That seems like a sad way to govern your life.""It's a safe way to govern your life.
Susin Nielsen
Elsa's mother no longer spoke to her of men and love, but of duty and fate and accepting one’s burden. As far as Elsa could tell, if love really was the inherited female domain, then women were saddled with the biggest burden of all. It was pressing down upon them, the way the sea pressed down upon the creatures of the deep.
Kathy-Diane Leveille
Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.
Anne Carson
He turned the music up loud. So what if it would deafen him? It made him happy. Like it had so many times before.
Stuart McLean
One could get bored even with beauty when one was constantly surrounded by it.
Morgan Rhodes
It is often better to have a great deal of harm happen to one than a little a great deal may rouse you to remove what a little will only accustom you to endure.
Grenville Kleiser
Take your beliefs into your everyday life. Practice what you preach. Self-observe. Correct. Try. Keep trying. Never give up.
Akiroq Brost
That felt strange. How sharp a rent a handful of moments made in the fabric of a life.
Guy Gavriel Kay
Daily discipline is the door to full freedom, and the discipline to count to one thousand gave way to the freedom of wonder and I can't imagine not staying awake to God in the moment, the joy in the now.
Ann Voskamp
Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backward in tie and exist in two places at once.
Margaret Atwood
Your ambition is the most reliable alarm clock.
Faisal Khosa
So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with. That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.
Margaret Atwood
Walter looked about him lingeringly and lovingly. This spot had always been so dear to him. What fun they all had had here lang syne. Phantoms of memory seemed to pace the dappled paths and peep merrily through the swinging boughs–Jem and Jerry, bare-legged, sunburned schoolboys, fishing in the brook and frying trout over the old stone fireplace; Nan and Di and Faith, in their dimpled, fresh-eyed childish beauty; Una the sweet and shy, Carl, poring over ants and bugs, little slangy, sharp-tongued, good-hearted Mary Vance–the old Walter that had been himself lying on the grass reading poetry or wandering through palaces of fancy. They were all there around him–he could see them almost as plainly as he saw Rilla–as plainly as he had once seen the Pied Piper piping down the valley in a vanished twilight. And they said to him, those gay little ghosts of other days, "We were the children of yesterday, Walter–fight a good fight for the children of today and tomorrow.
L.M. Montgomery
What's even more messed up than funerals, is the way people treat you after the funeral. Like you're diseased or something.
Denise Jaden
Religious people of any serious kind made her nervous: they were like men in raincoats who might or might not be flashers.
Margaret Atwood
This form of love is like the painof childbirth: so intenseit's hard to remember afterwards,
Margaret Atwood
There is also a fable told by Phaedrus, about how Simonides was once a victim of shipwreck. As the other passengers scurried about the sinking ship trying to save their possessions, the poet stood idle. When questioned, he declared, mecum mea sunt cuncta: everything that is me is with me.
Anne Carson
Every time we mention God we become theologians, and the only question is whether we are going to be good ones or bad ones.
J.I. Packer
While you've been gadding about the countryside, we've held a meeting, and we've all of us decided that you must go.'In short, we've voted you out of the family,' Daffy said. 'It was unanimous.
Alan Bradley
Let me get you all some punch,” I said.“You're leaving us?” said Isabel, sounding panicky.“I'll be right back,” I promised. “If anyone comes near you, just scream and run.
Kenneth Oppel
Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees...to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation. - Winston Churchill, remarking to his son during a visit to Canada in 1929
John Vaillant
I break into heterosexual houses so I can masturbate in their heterosexual kitchens
Joey Comeau
I thought I was in love with Leola, by which I meant that if I could have found her in a quiet corner, and if I had been certain that no one would ever find out, and if I could have summoned up the courage at the right moment, I would have kissed her. But, looking back on it now, I know that I was in love with Mrs Dempster. Not as some boys are in love with grown-up women, adoring them from afar and enjoying a fantasy life in which the older woman figures in an idealized form, but in a painful and immediate fashion; I saw her every day, I did menial tasks in her house, and I was charged to watch her and keep her from doing foolish things. Furthermore, I felt myself tied to her by the certainty that I was responsible for her straying wits, the disorder of her marriage, and the frail body of the child who was her great delight in life. I had made her what she was, and in such circumstances I must hate her or love her. In a mode that was far too demanding for my age or experience, I loved her.
Robertson Davies
We’re here,’ the Clock says.The Perfectionist opens her eyes. She sees nothing. It’s white. All white. There’s no up. There’s no down. No horizon. Nothing. It’s just white.‘Clock, what is this?’ asks the Perfectionist. Her voice is shaky.‘This is the future.’‘This is the future?’ the Perfectionist asks. Her mouth is dry. She forces herself to swallow.‘Why is the future like this?’‘Because it hasn’t happened yet,’ says the Clock
Andrew Kaufman
We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.We lived in the gaps between the stories.
Margaret Atwood
If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.
Margaret Atwood
I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.
Robertson Davies
When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.
Margaret Atwood
It is precisely this refusal of the Cartesian paradigm that characterizes Radical Orthodoxy, which seeks to reanimate the account of knowledge offered by Augustine and Aquinas. On this ancient-medieval-properly-postmodern model, we rightly give up pretensions to absolute knowledge or certainty, but we do not thereby give up on knowledge altogether. Rather, we can properly confess that we know God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, but such knowledge rests on the gift of (particular, special) revelation, is not universally objective or demonstrable, and remains a matter of interpretation and perspective (with a significant appreciation for the role of the Spirit's regeneration and illumination as a condition for knowledge). We confess knowledge without certainty, truth without objectivity.
James K.A. Smith
Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.
Malcolm Gladwell
Adventures are to the adventurous. They abound on every side; but only the chosen few have the courage to embrace them. And they will not come to you; you must go out to seek them. Then they meet you half-way, and rush into your arms, for they know their true lovers.
Allen Grant
To survive was to escape fate. But if you escape your fate, whose life do you then step into?
Anne Michaels
Wit is the thought process that generates truly funny observations, as well as the most incisive comments, lasting quips, and brilliant asides. To say wit is mean is like saying the sun is mean for burning you: The giant ball of hot plasma at the center of our solar system is bigger than that, and why weren't you wearing sunscreen in the first place?
Benjamin Errett
Blessed are you who circled desire with a blade, and the garden with fiery swords, and heaven and earth with a word.
Leonard Cohen
Rest in the knowledge that God is both abundantly gracious and ridiculously generous.
Jared Brock
People who mock incidents in history such as 9/11 or the Holocaust, referring to it all as a hoax or stirring up crazy conspiracy theories about it, should really stop and think about their words first, both because it shows flaws in logic and rationality to deny the obvious, and because to play pretend with incidents which killed innocent people, well, that's just like laughing in the face of tragedy. It's as if to say, "no, it's not horrible enough that these people were killed, oh no, we have to drag on these incidents by indulging in melodramatic fantasies!" In essence this means that those who lost loved ones not only have to live with these losses forever, they also have to live with the people who deny that any of it ever happened. It does no good to forget history or to deny it. All it does is desensitize people; it tells them that it's all just a game, which then risks the possibility of nobody taking it seriously enough to prevent something similar from happening again.
Rebecca McNutt
All of this,' the prophet said, serene, 'all of our activities, Sayid, you must understand this, all of your suffering, it's all part of a greater plan.''You'd be surprised at how little comfort I take from that notion.
Emily St. John Mandel
I think—” Anakin kicked his heel against the polished marble floor. “I think I hate it when I can’t stop my men from getting hurt. From dying. I think—
Karen Miller
[I]t is important not to abandon the practice [of yoga] because we believe it is driven by the wrong motivation. The practice of yoga itself transforms. Yoga has a magical quality. . . . (20)
Ravi Ravindra
Much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of (these) one-sided conflicts. Because the act of facing overwhelming odds, produces greatness and beauty.
Malcolm Gladwell
You are what you believe.
Akiroq Brost
If we learn to be responsible for our own emotions, thoughts, and needs, then we can see other people for who they are as opposed to what they can do for us.
Vironika Tugaleva
There is nothing like discovering your own secrets in someone else’s story. Those thoughts and feelings you believed were too ugly or strange or idealistic or desperate or whimsical or hungry or sad they had to be just you because there could be no other place for them, anywhere. Books that make you realize you’re not alone, you never were. Those are the ones I like best.
Courtney Summers
At the end of the day, your relationships with the people in your life will be greater assets than any material things. Take time. Be present. You'll thank yourself for it later.
Vironika Tugaleva
Productivity—true productivity—will never be better or stronger than the foundation you build it upon.
Tim Challies
His sins seemed to be so few that he was alarmed and groped anxiously for more, knowing he could not be without guilt.
Morley Callaghan
The part of the brain most affected by early stress is the prefrontal cortex, which is critical in self-regulatory activities of all kinds, both emotional and cognitive. As a result, children who grow up in stressful environments generally find it harder to concentrate, harder to sit still, harder to rebound from disappointments, and harder to follow directions. And that has a direct effect on their performance in school.
Paul Tough
What if each time you experienced an emotion, you acknowledged it, accepted it, and became curious about its message for you (instead of trying to make it go away or make it last longer)? Imagine how this could change your life. Imagine how heard, loved, and honoured you would feel if you really listened to yourself.
Vironika Tugaleva
Time: old cold time, old sorrow, settling down in layers like silt in a pond.
Margaret Atwood
I believe that people are holy because they’re made in the image of God, and a place can be holy when God is present—but no place is so holy that it’s worth shedding the blood of those who bear the image of God.
Jared Brock
The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.
Keanu Reeves
But why always think the worst of people? What would she be doing to herself if she adopted that attitude to life? It was better to think the best and be wrong than to think the worst and be wrong.
Mary Balogh
In the baby’s roomThe city lights areMilkyIn the curtains… Breath Gentle as rain, Sleep Quiet as snowflakes
John Geddes
Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time-rich and cash-poor.
Cory Doctorow
The joy of reading with our children doesn't stop as they, and we, get older; it simply changes.
Paul Kropp
Money is scarce; spend if you have to, not because you want to.
Vinita Kinra
I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion.
Yann Martel
It's the rule of bird shit.
Janine McCaw
There were always people who struggled their way to the top of the heap, no matter how much that heap looked like garbage when seen from the outside.
Michelle Sagara West