Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 29

Most stories are not about peoplebut about life, an addiction like the rest of themthat destroys you even as you love it,but you love it anyway and can never get enough.
Michael Hogan
I don't want to leave.
Svetlana Chmakova
...the secret to writing is to get your own pain - shout it out till it hurts your throat - weep it into your pillow - then write it down ...
John Geddes
...everything is gone except traces of you inside me - and the years like the wind are sweeping those away ...
John Geddes
We like to think we’re in charge of our own lives, but we ain’t.
Moira Young
Sometimes I think I must have a Guardian Idiot. A little invisible spirit just behind my shoulder, looking out for me...only he's an imbecile.
Spider Robinson
The first thing each morning and the last thing each night suggest to yourself specific ideas that you wish to embody in your character and personality. Address such suggestions to yourself silently or aloud until they are deeply impressed upon your mind.
Grenville Kleiser
Ah, Toulouse, you have travelled too much. You know the gods of a hundred lands, those of the trees and mountains, the sky and sea, the stars and planets, of demons and angels, and even the Master of the Cosmos. But I am speaking of God. There are others, I’m sure, but only one God who created even great Zeus and Rama. Yet travel is like philosophy: a few years of it will perk the eye to differences, which you shall be able to notice with ease. Yet living as I have, travelling to lonely lands and through a thousand metropolises and hidden woods, you rather see the similarities. All becomes one, and God too becomes one. Not the sum of all those gods here, but beyond them, a being few philosophers have truly grasped. He has always been one, but he is severed in our minds. So it is up to us to piece him back together. If our souls possess a clarity beyond what our mortal nature can bestow, we shall see him.
Mary-Jean Harris
The mind is not designed to grasp the laws of probability, even though the laws rule the universe.
Steven Pinker
Leo was a force of nature. He lived life big and loud in all respects…which meant that when he got riled up, everyone was sucked into the vortex along with him. His temper was legendary, but then again, so were his passions. He was charming and charismatic, brilliant and quick. He loved to argue, loved to box and work out, loved to laugh, loved to…love. And from the day they’d met, he’d swept her up into his whirlwind sphere, and she felt like she hadn’t been allowed a second to breathe since. Not that she’d minded, not while it had all still been safe and contained. She’d delighted in his passions…all of them. But everything was different now.
J.K. Coi
There can be no return to prosperity while the government (of Ontario) believes that taking money from the people who have earned it and giving it away to the people who haven't in exchange for their votes and regardless of merit is the essence of fairness.
Conrad Black
This seems charmingly paradoxical: scientists seek one truth but often voice many opinions journalists often speak of many truths while voicing a uniform view.
Christopher Essex
There is something joyful about storms, that interrupt routine. Snow or freezing rain suddenly releases you from expectations, performance demands, and the tyranny of appointments and schedules. And unlike illness, it is largely a corporate, rather than individual experience. One could almost hear a unified sigh rise from the nearby city and surrounding countryside, where nature has intervened to give respite to the weary humans slogging it out within her purview. All those affected this way are united by a mutual excuse, and the heart is suddenly, and unexpectedly, a little giddy. There will be no apologies needed for not showing up to some commitment or other. Everyone understands and shares in this singular justification, and the sudden alleviation of the pressure to produce makes the heart merry....Even if it's hardly more than a day or two, somehow each person feels like the master of his or her own world, simply because those little droplets of water freeze as they hit the ground. Even commonplace activities become extraordinary. Routine choices become adventures and are often experienced with a sense of heightened clarity.
William Paul Young
Pray always pray when sickness wastes thy frame Prayer brings the healing power of Jesus' name.
A.B. Simpson
Zachariah, Zachariah,' whispers Rachel, casting a practised eye over the back of his head and down the length of him, from the shoulder blades where his wings once grew, epochs ago, in some other guise: angel—guardian, avenging—or great vagrant bird—Daurian Jackdaw, Chimney Swift, Pacific Loon!
Emma Richler
We are identified and known by the sort of fruit, the quantity of fruit, and the quality of fruit borne out in our daily conversation, conduct, and character. There is no greater criterion for Christians. It is the paramount gauge of God's people.
W. Phillip Keller
What thumbsuckers we all are...when it comes to mothers.
Margaret Atwood
Now get going. You'll find a way of calm through.""And you, Mael?""I'll drop in later. I've things for you to do, Withal. But for now," he faced inland, "I'm going to beat a god senseless.
Steven Erikson
Could a name be any shorter? Three letters without even the flourish of an e. Ann, a trio of curves and lines.It means “full of grace”.
Ann Voskamp
Remember that the choices you make, and the reasons you make them, shape your destiny. Remember your free will...And remember, what the True One has made is supposed to bring balance and unity, not anger, fear or revenge. Do not fear, what is yours to use. Only beware the ends to which it is turned, and know the means will truly determine the outcome.
Derek Donais
humans have an evolved capacity to engage in self-deception in order to navigate through life in a delusional state of blissful ignorance.
Gad Saad
Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is color that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.
Yann Martel
...you mean you don't fit characters into a plot? excatly...
John Geddes
No voice comes from outer space, from the folds of dust and carpets of wind to tell us that this is the way it was meant to happen, that if only we knew how long the ruins would last we would never complain.
Mark Strand
We think of ourselves as failures, rather than renounce our belief in the possibility of perfection. We hang on to the hope of eternal love by denying even its temporary validity. It´s less painful to think 'I'm shallow', 'She's self centred', 'We couldn't communicate', 'It was all just physical', than to accept the simple fact that love is a passing sensation, for reasons beyond our control and even beyond our personalities. But who can reassure himself with his own rationalizations? No argument can fill the void of a dead feeling -- that reminder of the ultimate void, our final inconstancy. We're untrue even to life.
Stephen Vizinczey
Then took the quilt out of its linen wrapper for the pleasure of the brilliant colors and the feel of the velvet. The needlework was very fine and regular. Adair hated needlework and she could not imagine sitting and stitching the fine crow’s-foot seams.Writing was the same, the pinching of thoughts into marks on paper and trying to keep your cursive legible, trying to think of the next thing to say and then behind you on several sheets of paper you find you have left permanent tracks, a trail, upon which anybody could follow you. Stalking you through your deep woods of private thought.
Paulette Jiles
Rejoice, for bad things are about to happen.
Ryan Sohmer
...what will happen to us this night will resemble a flame consuming the icy desert, a shower of stars reflected in a piece of a mirror that in the darkness suddenly fell out of its frame to warn its owner about the proximity of death. It'll resemble the shepherd's pipe and the music that has not been written yet.
Sasha Sokolov
Lost, so small amid that dark, hands grown cold, body image fading down corridors of television sky.
William Gibson
To my way of thinking there's something wrong, or missing, with any person who hasn't got a soft spot in their heart for an animal of some kind. With most folks the dog stands highest as man's friend, then comes the horse, with others the cat is liked best as a pet, or a monkey is fussed over; but whatever kind of animal it is a person likes, it's all hunkydory so long as there's a place in the heart for one or a few of them.
Will James
Jake and Hunter will make you forget all other book boyfriends you thought you loved!
Scarlett Avery
The sun was shut up in a cold bottle.
Saul Bellow
Law school taught me one thing: how to take two situations that are exactly the same and show how they are different.
Hart Pomerantz
Victory is always bittersweet.
Nadia Scrieva
... forgiveness is a religious imperative: forgive those who trespass against you. But it is also a very practical strategy based on the belief that there are profound limits to what the formal mechanisms of retribution can accomplish.
Malcolm Gladwell
An angel kissed my strings, while I slept last night. And her rhythm broke my hunger. And I died a little less.
Sara Quin
The ocean was waiting with grand and bitter provocations, as if it invited you to think how deep it was, how much colder than your blood or saltier, or to outguess it, to tell which were its feints or passes and which its real intentions, meaning business.
Saul Bellow
Progressives' don’t just redefine (and valorize) deviancy; they insist on renaming it, too.
Kathy Shaidle
Nothing is so fundamental to the spiritual life as learning to give thanks.
Gordon T. Smith
I’ll always be a student, because I think of music as never ending.
Lenny Breau
There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.
Margaret Atwood
We’re all monsters, sweetheart. Some of us just hide it better than others.
Bethany-Kris
You don't need this prep but I'm going to give it to you anyway. I can tell, I don't know any of you that well, but I can see it in your faces that and some of you have faces that remind me of what my face looked like when I was younger. I see some of you young people out there and I remember how hard it is to be young. And I remember how hard it is to be rejected the first time when you're young. And so what I want you to do is close your eyes. And I can see you, so don't cheat me here. Close those eyes of yours. Put 'em, real tight. And I want you to imagine the first person who broke you heart. The first person that didn't like you back, the first person that said shitty stuff about you. The first person that dumped you. The first person that changed their phone number because you called them 62 times in one day. The first person that didn't know how good you were and they missed you, they passed you by. Imagine that person and then I want you to sing at the top of your fucking lungs. I want you to sing. I want to heal that with you right now. (sings): Look me in the eye and tell me you dont find me attractive.Look me in the heart and tell me that you wont go. Look me in the eye and promise no love is like our love look me in the heart and unbreak broken it wont happen.
Tegan Quin
Gods, man, don't you start now,' I said softly. 'We're going to get a terrible reputation if we just keep travelling across the countryside crying all the time.
Sebastien de Castell
Patience is a power unto itself.
Robyn Wideman
…but youth yearned to youth.
L.M. Montgomery
Also she went in for culture, which gave her a certain moral authority. It wouldn't now; but people believed, then, that culture could make you better - a better person. They believed it could uplift you, or the women believed it. They hadn't yet seen Hitler at the opera house.
Margaret Atwood
Never say that anything is hopeless, Tristal, until it has irreparably failed. And always remember that Elamm’ may perform any action, though it may seem impossible to you.
Benita J. Prins
All media work us over completely.
Marshall McLuhan
Art is a conversation we are all invited to and are all worthy to participate in. Yes, great works can be intimidating, but no one else in the world has what you have—your voice, your eyes, your feeling and perspective. Other people have written great books, but no one else will ever write YOUR book. It's worth writing. That is the belief that carries me through.
Rachel Hartman
...I always took the rearmost seat in the classroom - it gave me a good view of things. And I must confess, the location taught me more about human nature and justice than could be learned from the professors' lectures.
Rohinton Mistry
Now, almost one hundred years later, it is difficult to fully appreciate how much our picture of the universe has changed in the span of a single human lifetime. As far as the scientific community in 1917 was concerned, the universe was static and eternal, and consisted of a one single galaxy, our Milky Way, surrounded by vast, infinite, dark, and empty space. This is, after all, what you would guess by looking up at the night sky with your eyes, or with a small telescope, and at the time there was little reason to suspect otherwise.
Lawrence M. Krauss
Perhaps crossing the barriers of time has freed me.
W.P. Kinsella
You do not need any more strength. You need only to realize how strong you already are.
Vironika Tugaleva
Then her brain caught up with her body and a trickle of uncertainty slid through her. She stilled, heart pounding, body aching with the most intense desire she’d ever known. Nathan stopped and raised his head to look down at her, his hand still cupping her breast. He was breathing as hard as she was, his eyes glittering with a hunger so raw it sliced her inside. When she didn’t say anything he started to remove his hand but she tightened her grip and held him there as she gazed into his eyes. “I can’t be just another notch on your belt, Nathan,” she whispered in an agonized voice. Not with him, it would crush her. If that’s all she was to him, she would rather stop things here than continue. She’d already battled long and hard to overcome feeling cheap and used. She wouldn’t do it again for any man, not even Nathan. The anguished look on his face made her feel terrible for saying it, but she’d had to make it clear. “No,” he insisted, leaning down to rest his forehead against hers and closing his eyes. She could feel the urgency in him, the way it strung his muscles tight, the fingers in her hair sliding open to cradle the back of her skull. The protective, possessive gesture made her melt and lean into his hold. “No, you’re not, I swear to God you’re not.
Kaylea Cross
For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.
Yann Martel
...language always occurs in a context - you can speak Elizabethan words, but to speak the language you have to put on the mindset...
John Geddes
It is the weak and confused who worship the pseudo-simplicities of brutal directness.
Marshall McLuhan
Is it considered unadventurous if you really don't feel like doing it? Sometimes I lie awake parcelling out my adventurousness or lack thereof. Should I have done it anyway on the off-chance that something adventurous would happen, and damn the consequences of giving a faulty impression in the process? Can you choose your adventures or does that make them comprised? I think I only take chances when there is a good chance of reward. I may have it all wrong.
Michelle Orange
The chakras in your body are as to galaxies on the body of God.
L.J Vanier