Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 21

Just as with swimming or riding a bike, you can't really learn how to fall in love from reading a book not even this one. Sure you can read about the different swimming strokes or the parts of a bicycle; you can learn the theory and physics behind the sport. But to get to the heart of the matter you've got to leap in and learn by doing.
Nicholas Boothman
Camba had bent her long neck down to Ingar's level and was muttering in his ear. "Do you feel the breeze on your face?" I heard her say. "That's yours, and worth feeling. Look at those orange clouds. All the trials of a day may be endured if you know there's such a sky at the end of it. Some days I told my heart to wait, just wait, because the sunset would teach me again that my pain was nothing compared with the eternal, circling sky.
Rachel Hartman
Old Tomorrow.
Sir John A. Macdonald
The only guide which I feel that I can follow is not the fluctuating dicta of those who are victors in the battle for popularity at a given moment, but my own understanding of the American tradition in which I was brought up.
Jane Jacobs
[My father] was handsome and tanned and smelled wonderful, like a mix of the ocean and fresh-cut grass, except when he smoked his pipe, which also smelled wonderful, as how I thought wisdom must smell, when it curls about your head.
Carolyn Weber
A thought comes into her head: that lately she doesn't ask herself what is possible, but rather what possibilities remain.
Carol Shields
She’s a kid. Nothing to be afraid of. You’ve faced scores of bloodthirsty enemy soldiers happily willing to die if it meant killing you. You can handle one little girl.”~ CalExcerpt From: Andrews, Keira. “Semper Fi.” iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.
Keira Andrews
for you to see beauty heredoes not meanthere is beauty in meit means there is beauty rootedso deep within youyou can’t help butsee it everywhere
Rupi Kaur
Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body.
Yann Martel
The Japanese have two words: "uchi" meaning inside and "soto" meaning outside. Uchi refers to their close friends, the people in their inner circle. Soto refers to anyone who is outside that circle. And how they relate and communicate to the two are drastically different. To the soto, they are still polite and they might be outgoing, on the surface, but they will keep them far away, until they are considered considerate and trustworthy enough to slip their way into the uchi category. Once you are uchi, the Japanese version of friendship is entire universes beyond the average American friendship! Uchi friends are for life. Uchi friends represent a sacred duty. A Japanese friend, who has become an uchi friend, is the one who will come to your aid, in your time of need, when all your western "friends" have turned their back and walked away.
Alexei Maxim Russell
There are lots of reasons why a woman stays with a man, even when she's given up on changing him and can predict with certainty the shape that the rest of her life with him is going to take.
A.S.A. Harrison
For the first time in this 11 years--I have come to love the darkness--for I believe now that it is a part, a very, very small part of Jesus' dakness and pain on earth. You have taught me to accept it [as] a "spiritual side of 'your work'"... (Mother Teresa, quoated in Kolodiejchuk, p. 208).
Brian Kolodiejchuk
My whole life is out here-the whole of my life...I'd come here naked, as a boy-straight from that river out there-throw my clothes on the floor and climb into that loft and lie there dreaming in the hay...All those summer days-scouring the banks of the Avon for smooth, round stones-scaring up ducks and foxes-kingfishers-swallows...somebody's dog...Oh, God-I want it back. Throwing stones that never reached the other shore. And the games-the games-the games, and all my friends...
Timothy Findley
Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth.
Emma Donoghue
The simple choice to pray usually happens to the exclusion of something else in our lives. Often that something else is frivolous, but at times prayer must come at the expense of important things, such as our own work, our sleep or our time with loved ones.
Jason Mandryk
I was a talking lover, which most women hate.
Robertson Davies
...some of the best love poems have been written by monks and nuns...
John Geddes
The uneasy expression returned and his mouth twisted scornfully. She waited, certain he was going to say something. Lou'd heard it too many times before: a woman doing a man's work. She'd already decided how she was going to cut him down if he did. Instead, he said nothing.
Danika Stone
...some writers closet themselves - I write wherever I am because that's where life is happening ...
John Geddes
She is increasingly of the opinion that worrying about problems doesn't help solve them, but she hasn't really found an alternative yet. Surely you can't just leave them there.
William Gibson
Modern medicine is not scientific, it is full of prejudice, illogic and susceptible to advertising. Doctors are not taught to reason, they are programmed to believe in whatever their medical schools teach them and the leading doctors tell them. Over the past 20 years the drug companies, with their enormous wealth, have taken medicine over and now control its research, what is taught and the information released to the public.
Abram Hoffer
Love or hate my work. I write not to impress. It's just in me to give.
Anne-Rae Vasquez
Forgiveness means letting go of the hope for a better past. You won't be able to forgive yourself for not doing things differently until you stop wishing things were different
Zoe York
So why don’t Americans cheat? Because they think that their system is legitimate. People accept authority when they see that it treats everyone equally, when it is possible to speak up and be heard, and when there are rules in place that assure you that tomorrow you won’t be treated radically different from how you are treated today. Legitimacy is based on fairness, voice and predictability, and the U.S. government, as much as Americans like to grumble about it, does a pretty good job of meeting all three standards. Pg. 293
Malcolm Gladwell
Never invite any kind of spirit to enter either your home or your person. This is an extremely important point to remember. To do so always risks to unwittingly invite evil spirits in, instead. Good spirits never need to be invited in.
Alexei Maxim Russell
Birth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it.
Rohinton Mistry
The world is my country the human race is my race. The spirit of man is my god the future of man is my heaven.
F. R. Scott
Be the story teller in your life...never let anyone dictate what you’re about.
Robbie Thomas
Was this how the characters in Harry Potter felt when the spoke the name of You-Know-Who?
Lisi Harrison
You do not require a license to love someone; you don’t need to pass any complicated tests. Love does not have age limitations, rules, or restrictions. Love is our birthright—it is the one thing that all humans know how to do, the one thing we all deserve. You can’t force it or fake it. You can know someone for an entire lifetime, and not feel a drop of love for them. And you can know someone for a single day, and give your heart to them completely.
Nadia Scrieva
The greatest discovery of the 21st century will be the discovery that Man was not meant to live at the speed of light.
Marshall McLuhan
It felt like the times were good, like we were remembering a time before Rachel died, even though things were never this good then, because they were just normal, and ordinary is never the kind if good you remember.
Zoe Whittall
Art is a kind of mining," he said. "The artist a variety of prospector searching for the sparkling silver of meaning in the earth.
Jane Urquhart
I needed them, sure, and we can all argue about the moment when the balance tipped and I needed them so much that I would hurt. But you can't pretend they didn't need me too, each in his or her way. They wouldn't necessarily have admitted it - except Reza - but you can't tell me they didn't love me. The heart knows. The body knows. When I was with Sirena, or Reza, or Skandar, the air moved differently between us; time passed differently; words or gestures meant more than themselves. If you've never had this experience-but who has not been visited by love, laughing?-then you can't understand. And if you have, you don't need me to say another word.
Claire Messud
His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky.
David Morrell
...when I chose you, I didn't want the commonplace - I didn't want a 'partner' - I wanted a shrine...
John Geddes
I'm the most awesome person I know.
Iva Ursano
Human nature, at its best, had always been based on a deep heroic restlessness, on wanting something--something else, something more, whether it be true love or a glimpse just beyond the horizon. It was the promise of happiness, not the attainment of it, that had driven the entire engine, the folly and glory of who we are.
Will Ferguson
Close analysis of ‘miracles’ have never led to any proof for a supernatural explanation, and, in fact, many have proven to be cheap magic tricks, hallucinations or primitive misunderstandings of natural phenomena.
Armin Navabi
Alecto, do you think we have fallen from heaven, or do you think we are falling towards it?
Rebecca McNutt
Anti-sabbatical: A job taken with the sole intention of staying only for a limited period of time (often one year). The intention is usually to raise enough funds to partake in another, more personally meaningful activity such as watercolor sketching in Crete or designing computer knit sweaters in Hong Kong. Employers are rarely informed of intentions
Douglas Coupland
Repression. Her therapist, Dr. Solomon, loved the word. He'd say it slowly, letting it roll off his tongue. Sometimes he'd add a chin stroke for good measure. He always looked pleased when he did this, like he'd discovered the Caramilk secret or something.
Jo Ann Yhard
You can be a French Canadian or an English Canadian but not a Canadian. We know how to live without an identity and this is one of our marvellous resources.
Marshall McLuhan
And it did me no good to recall particular conversations (if indeed these were particular conversations I was remembering so vividly, rather than inventions of my uneasy brain). Remembering clarified nothing.
Emma Donoghue
The borders of man, defined by politics, war, and faith - all three manifestations of delusion - meant even more to gods.
Michael R. Fletcher
History fondly remembers those who meet expectations but is written by a few who exceed them
Faisal Khosa
Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
Robertson Davies
Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?
L.M. Montgomery
God what an outfield,' he says. 'What a left field.' He looks up at me, and I look down at him. 'This must be heaven,' he says.No. It's Iowa,' I reply automatically. But then I feel the night rubbing softly against my face like cherry blossoms; look at the sleeping girl-child in my arms, her small hand curled around one of my fingers; think of the fierce warmth of the woman waiting for me in the house; inhale the fresh-cut grass small that seems locked in the air like permanent incense; and listen to the drone of the crowd, as below me Shoelss Joe Jackson tenses, watching the angle of the distant bat for a clue as to where the ball will be hit.I think you're right, Joe,' I say, but softly enough not to disturb his concentration.
W.P. Kinsella
The lights are off and the sun if finally setting, the night sky is changing overhead
Tegan Quin
Indifference may not wreck a man's life at any one turn but it will destroy him with a kind of dry-rot in the long run.
Bliss Carman
Don't live your life like a movie. Always thinkin you could've been something. Don't live your life for me or for anyone. You live your life as if you're one.
Tegan Quin
How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the air, to be tossed about by the music. How does one say that I breathed, that I existed, in harmony with the ups and downs of those notes. What kind of notes both elevate and cast down, exalt and crush?
Yann Martel
Since I see technology as being an extension of the human body, it's inevitable that it should come home to roost.
David Cronenberg
I've been treating you with courtesy and respect because that's the way I choose to treat everyone. But never, ever mistake kindness with weakness.
Louise Penny
Women think that they can make sad things go away by knowing the reason that they happened.
Johanna Skibsrud
Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.
Yann Martel
Condoms seemed to her inherently wicked. But they were also inherently funny. They were like rubber gloves with only one finger, and every time she saw one she had to be severe with herself or she’d get the giggles, a terrifying thought because the man might think you were laughing at him, at his dick, at its size, and that would be fatal.
Margaret Atwood
I was just chased through St. Willibald’s, and you know why? Because I was kind to a quig. I scrupulously hide every legitimate reason for people to hate me, and then it turns out they don’t need legitimate reasons. Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.
Rachel Hartman
Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
Saul Bellow