Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 165

He pulls down one of my straps, slides his other hand in among the feathers, but it's no good, I lie there like a dead bird. He is not a monster, I think. I can't afford pride or aversion, there are all kinds of things that have to be discarded, under the circumstances. "Maybe I should turn the lights out," says the Commander, dismayed and no doubt disappointed. I see him for a moment before he does this. Without his uniform he looks smaller, older, like something being dried. The trouble is that I can't be, with him, any different from the way I usually am with him. Usually I'm inert. Surely there must be something here for us, other than this futility and bathos.
Margaret Atwood
Cat, I'll let you in on a little secret. We don't all love our jobs every day. And doing something you have passion for doesn't make the work part of it any easier...It just makes you less likely to quit.
Kate Jacobs
He was evidently the sort of person who posed questions that were traps for you to fall into.
Alice Munro
Each of them is a book through which other books dream. (referring to Nodier's SMARRA and TRILBY)
John Clute
But when justice is done the world drops away.
Anne Carson
Could a love of that magnitude die? If it was true love, could it ever die? Was there such a thing as true love?
Mary Balogh
Super 8 film is the language of silence.
Rebecca McNutt
It has always been my belief that, for everyone who is ready and willing, there is a place. it seems to wait for him or her, in some good human cause. Causes are man-made, to be sure, and in the long run, I believe man can control the destiny of civilization on this earth. And yet I know that, beyond it all, there is an everlasting purpose, and within each one of us there is that lonely something that links us with Divinity. The link is there, to be used or disregarded. Each must make his own choice. p.117-118
Wilder Penfield
...my heart rides the wind and my thoughts sail away - to a land below the horizon where I know you hide from me...
John Geddes
Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations.
Jane Jacobs
In the meantime, I’ll get a job. I’ll pay my own way.” “A job?” “Mmm, yeah. It’s that thing people do to make money.
Kelley Armstrong
Humbly let go. Let go of trying to do, let go of trying to control, let go of my own way, let go of my own fears. Let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen for joy's fire. Leave the hand open and be. Be at peace. Bend the knee and be small and let God give what God chooses to give because He only gives love and whisper a surprised thanks. This is the fuel for joy's flame. Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will. And I can empty. I can empty because counting His graces has awakened me to how He cherishes me, holds me, passionately values me. I can empty because I am full of His love. I can trust.
Ann Voskamp
Her faith in a loving and forgiving God is strong, but she worships laughter.
Miriam Toews
I sweat terror, Robyn! I'm scared every single second about every single goddamned thing. I worry obsessively about being buried under an avalanche of fear. Jesus, Robyn, I'm scared like only the truly crazy ca
Teresa Toten
Many people think that the theory of the selfish gene says that “animals try to spread their genes.” That misstates the facts and it misstates the theory. Animals, including most people, know nothing about genetics and care even less. People love their children not because they want to spread their genes (consciously or unconsciously) but because they can’t help it. That love makes them try to keep their children warm, fed, and safe. What is selfish is not the real motives of the person but the metaphorical motives of the genes that built the person. Genes “try” to spread themselves by wiring animals’ brains so the animals love their kin and try to keep warm, fed, and safe.
Steven Pinker
Technology enables us to work every minute of every day from any place on the planet.
Carl Honoré
In the end, I sold my soul." he had said, and Abby had replied "That wasn’t the end.
Jo Walton
Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited.
Yann Martel
Sometimes hope is like wearing someone else’s coat. You know it can shield and protect you, just as it did them, but it still doesn’t feel right. You’re just not used to it.
Karina Halle
you are the mysterious fire at my finger tips
John Geddes
The Rights Revolutions too have given us ideals that educated people today take for granted but that are virtually unprecedented in human history, such as that people of all races and creeds have equal rights, that women should be free from all forms of coercion, that children should never, ever be spanked, that students should be protected from bullying, and that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. I don’t find it at all implausible that these are gifts, in part, of a refined and widening application of reason.
Steven Pinker
one of the great virtues of Christianity, according to (John)Wesley, is the way it fills up our every waking hour. Both (N.T.) Wright and Wesley write that Christianity is not just about what God does for us but what God does in us.
John Meunier
The task of evolutionary psychology is not to weigh in on human nature, a task better left to others. It is to add the satisfying kind of insight that only science can provide: to connect what we know about human nature with the rest of our knowledge of how the world works, and to explain the largest number of facts with the smallest number of assumptions.
Steven Pinker
All problems are illusions of the mind.
Eckhart Tolle
Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them-- that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.
L.M. Montgomery
DSM-5 is not 'the bible of psychiatry' but a practical manual for everyday work. Psychiatric diagnosis is primarily a way of communicating. That function is essential but pragmatic—categories of illness can be useful without necessarily being 'true.' The DSM system is a rough-and-ready classification that brings some degree of order to chaos. It describes categories of disorder that are poorly understood and that will be replaced with time. Moreover, current diagnoses are syndromes that mask the presence of true diseases. They are symptomatic variants of broader processes or arbitrary cut-off points on a continuum.
Joel Paris
The War on Drugs, from the Hastings-facing window of the PortlandHotel, is manifested in the pregnant Celia kneeling on the sidewalk,handcuffed wrists behind her back, eyes cast on the ground. Therewas no Detective-Sergeant Gillespie to protect her when, as a littlegirl, she was raped by her stepfather and subjected to the nocturnalspitting ritual, so in the War on Drugs she has become one of theenemy.
Gabor Maté
I’m no werewolf, and I’m tired of hearing the word. I’m a Changeling, okay? And either you trust me or we call it quits right here.” It was Travis’s turn to fold his arms, as if he was daring her to convince him.
Dani Harper
Racism is a refuge for the ignorant. It seeks to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom, and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out.
Pierre Berton
I have been made to realize tonight that there are limits to what I wish to do or see done for any cause.
Guy Gavriel Kay
Etta, it could be everything, it could be nothing, what you’re making up. You shouldn’t let that bother you.
Emma Hooper
There is earth below your earth, a deep room wheregas and oil, rock and stone, circulate like slow bloodthrough a body.
Mathew Henderson
Because with time blocking out the bad, memory is always bound to be a bit naive and stupidly optimistic.
Guy Delisle
And now the thought came to me that I lived much of my life through the pages of books as well. That perhaps I, too, was only a paper figure. A cut-out, or silhouette. Flat.I always thought I knew the shape of my life. Of course I thought I knew about life, thought I knew all I needed - or wanted - to know. And yet, like the opening left when a burning star falls from its perch, now an unexpected hole was left in what was once a solid curtain of understanding... ( )... Sitting under the cold stars, I understood that it was death that made me recognize life, and the existence, or pherhaps the non-existence of my own beeing.
Linda Holeman
...I've discovered why you fascinate - you keep the mystery and as Carlyle noted, Wonder is the basis of worship...
John Geddes
Where was the line between compassion and foolishness, kindness and weakness? And that was from her position. From theirs, it might be a line between mercy and cruelty, consideration and callousness.
Rohinton Mistry
She wondered if old dreams could haunt rooms - if, when one left forever the room where she had joyed and suffered and laughed and wept, something of her, intangible and invisible, yet nonetheless real, did not remain behind like a voiceful memory.
L.M. Montgomery
...each heart is made of a different stone - no two feel alike nor break the same way ...
John Geddes
The essence of a successful business is really quite simple. It is your ability to offer a product or service that people will pay for at a price sufficiently above your costs, ideally three or four or five times your cost, thereby giving you a profit that enables you to buy and to offer more products and services.
Brian Tracy
Two things consistently bring me pleasure: hot sweet tea and writing. Which is not to say that either are particularly good for me…I use entirely too much sugar and so far don’t find sucralose to be a good alternative. Also, writing is not a practice that engenders confidence. Quite the opposite. It’s about making yourself deliberately insecure so that you can write the next thing and have it be worth reading.And that’s not even taking into consideration the business end of things, which can make you bitter if you’re not careful…But I’ve spent my the bulk of my life to date figuring out the right mix of fat and sugar in my tea and also, how to get incrementally better (I hope…) at the writing, so I’m not giving it/them up!
Ariel Gordon
It's not worth it!It's not workin'!You wanted it to be picture perfect!
Thousand Foot Krutch
She tied him a fly, using a pattern she’d designed, one that had given her untold luck with those silvery fish, those fighting steelhead. She was anxious for his return. “Does it have a name?” he said, when she gave it to him. “The Predator.” She smiled. A little embarrassed. His eyes turned dark, and her heart beat faster. His voice dipped low. “It’s a fine name.” He regarded her for several heavy, silent beats. She felt an atavistic pull, the hairs on her arms rising toward him, as if in electrical attraction. He leaned closer and her mouth turned dry. And he told her about the wild blueberries. Down by the bend in the river. She took the lure. She went in search of the berries. She never came home.
Loreth Anne White
I am convinced that in the present time, in spite of the difficulties man has to meet another in a state of oblation, communion and gift of self, there are latent hidden forces in him which can be awakened in order to enable him to discover and live this reality of love and fidelity. In order to really penetrate into this mystery of the union of the couple, it is essential that each one acquire an interior maturity, a maturity that is perhaps rare. I would add that in order to be truly united and to remain truly faithful to one another, the couple must listen and be open to the Spirit of God who has reserved for Himself the science of the heart. The heart of man is satisfied only by the Infinite and to discover this Infinite in union he must open himself to the Spirit of God, a spirit of giving, of receiving. The union between the two spouses can thus deepen to such an extent that they enter in a mystical manner into the very life of God Himself.
Jean Vanier
Everything begins to feel right when we see the world in a different way."Living Beyond the Five Senses
Teresa L. DeCicco
Last night I watched the weather channel, as is my habit. Elsewhere in the world there are floods: roiling brown water, bloated cows floating by, survivors huddled on rooftops. Thousands have drowned. Global warming is held accountable: People must stop burning things up, it is said. Gasoline, oil, whole forests. But they won't stop. Greed and hunger lash them on, as usual.
Margaret Atwood
I suppose in the end the whole of life becomes an act of letting go. But what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.
Yann Martel
As you look back on your life, you will often realize that many of the times you thought you were being rejected from something good, you were in fact being redirected to something better. You can’t control everything. Sometimes you just need to relax and have faith things will work out. Let go and just let life happen the way it’s supposed to. Sometimes the outcomes you can’t change end up changing you and helping you grow mentally, emotionally or spiritually.When things fall apart, consider the possibility that life knocked them down for a reason. It was not to punish you, but to prompt you to build something better to fit your personality and your purpose. Sometimes things fall apart so better things can fall together.
John Geiger
Because the state uses violence to achieve its ends, and there is no rational end to the use of violence, states grow until they destroy civilized interactions through the corruption of money, contracts, honesty, family and self-reliance.No state in history has ever been contained.It’s only taken a little more than a century for the US – founded on the idea of limited government, to break the bonds of the constitution, institute the income tax, take control of the money supply and the educational system and begin its catastrophic expansion.
Stefan Molyneux
Now I want you to remember something because I don't think we shall meet again very soon. It is this; however fashionable despair about the world and about people may be at present, and however powerful despair may become in the future, not everybody, or even most people, think and live fashionably; virtue and honour will not be banished from the world, however many popular moralists and panicky journalists say so. Sacrifice will not cease to be because psychiatrists have popularized the idea that there is often some concealed, self-serving element in it; theologians always knew that. Nor do I think love as a high condition of honour will be lost; it is a pattern in the spirit, and people long to make the pattern a reality in their own lives, whatever means they take to do so. In short, Davey, God is not dead. And I can assure you God is not mocked.
Robertson Davies
As with any form of mental self-improvement, you must learn to turn your gaze inward, concentrate on processes that usually run automatically, and try to wrest control of them so that you can apply them more mindfully.
Steven Pinker
The more underdeveloped the country the more overdeveloped the women.
J. K. Galbraith
He was so close his breath touched my cheek. Staring into his eyes, I could almost forget about the nightmare. I could almost forget about Mama. Like the woods back in Virginia, his eyes changed color with his mood—greener when he laughed and darker, like now, when he was angry or worried. They were kind, serious, intelligent eyes that crinkled in the corners when he smiled.
Katherine Fleet
My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.
L.M. Montgomery
This is the thing about school dances. They make like it's supposed to be this other-worldly thing, but really it's just the people you see every day dressed up, standing in the gym in the dark with Red Hot Chili Peppers playing.
Mariko Tamaki
What's next? If there are vampires in there, they probably drink artificial blood plasma substitute.
Kelley Armstrong
In small settlements everyone knows your affairs. In the big city everyone does not - only those you choose to tell will know about you. This is one of the attributes of cities that is precious to most city people.
Jane Jacobs
To connect is to dissolve the imaginary pyramids of artificial privilege.
Stefan Molyneux
A...reason we are so-so scientists is that our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.
Steven Pinker
Sorry! I didn't mean to say that," I mumble into the pillow next to her head."Oh.""No! I mean, I meant what I said. I just didn't mean to tell you.
Victoria Denault
When the Bible offends you, be encouraged that it offends everyone at some point. Consider the responsibility of the Bible. It must speak the truth to every culture through every era of history. I believe that there has never been a culture on earth that has not been offended by the Bible on some issue. What offends one group could be common sense to another and vice versa. Some cultures are offended that God would judge people for their sin. Some cry out to God to judge people because of sin. There are some cultures that are appalled at how God would forgive people no matter what they have done. For other cultures, that kind of forgiveness is expected of God.
Jon Morrison