Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 16

I pull his hair a little harder while pushing his head harder against me. His fingers curl inside me, stroking my spot as his tongue caresses my clit with increased urgency.” —Sofia Herrera (Never Say Never, Unbearable Passion, #1)
Scarlett Avery
Rage wrapped itself around her like a tourniquet, keeping her alive even as it condemned a part of her to atrophy.
Omar El Akkad
Yet I never sought what is real, yearned for the real, but rather I have yearned for dreams more than solid things. I can say I love the textures of dreams. The way they hover and almost taste. The clouds and darkness that linger behind, mostly unseen. And the palette of dreams. You can almost taste the colours, they seem as words on the tip of the tongue, unsayable as pomegranate seeds, unsayable as thick cream, the darkness of such a thick cream. This is why I am obsessed with dreams. They know what we cannot. Night after night they try and tell us the impossible. Dreams are secret and closed, and also contain everything, gushing, splayed open. Dream suitcases, carpetbags, hold-alls. They influence us secretly and they draw me to travel to nowhere, to beauty’s passage, through halls of mirrors where I know I am not myself, I know I am sublime.
Shawna Lemay
Many people implicitly believe in the Hydraulic Theory of Violence: that humans harbor an inner drive toward aggression (a death instinct or thirst for blood), which builds up inside us and must periodically be discharged. Nothing could be further from a contemporary scientific understanding of the psychology of violence. Aggression is not a single motive, let alone a mounting urge. It is the output of several psychological systems that differ in their environmental triggers, their internal logic, their neurobiological basis, and their social distribution.
Steven Pinker
Death was in every fibre of these creatures. It was hidden in their languages and at the root of their civilizations. You could hear it in the sounds they made and see it in the way they moved. It darkened their pleasures and lightened their despair.
André Alexis
Synchronicities then can be said are the product of focused thought which appear as patterns repeating in time. These wheels of time or gears of life then, can only record synchronicites as they occur by consciously manifesting and observing the patterns of behaviour from which they were created.
L.J Vanier
...I live in Ireland every day in a drizzly dream of a Dublin walk...
John Geddes
There is a common tendency to turn off one's imagination at certain points and refuse to contemplate the possibility of having to do certain things and cope with the attendant moral problems. The things simply get done by the social machine, and one can keep one's clear conscience and one's moral indignation unsullied.
John Fraser
Life is not a harvest. Just because you have an apple doesn’t mean you have an orchard. You have an apple. Put a fence around it. Once you have put a fence around everything you value, then you have the total circle of your heart.
Sheila Heti
Deep pockets and empty hearts rule the world. We unleash them at our peril.
Stefan Molyneux
Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.... Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.
Robertson Davies
He was a committed leader, capable of - or prone to - instinctive decisions. More: he could put aside thought in the service of forceful action. But in quiet moments his sensitivity sometimes led him to reconsider his own behaviour. In other words, Atticus had a conscience, and it was this that led him to what some would call faith.
André Alexis
In any ten step instruction manual and every book of doctrines, there is complex advice that serves the very simple function of helping the lonely person find some similarity with the world around him.He connects and, suddenly, there is a burst of joy, a ray of hope. He believes that it was those steps or that book, specifically, that brought him happiness, when really he has simply been triggered into his natural state.
Vironika Tugaleva
The Sun Tzu School (which wrote the Art of War) surely never imagined that their antiwar, pro-empire treatise would become known and accepted after the fall of the first empire as a text on military tactics. Likewise, they would have been surprised to see the Ping-fa military metaphor—an inspired teaching device—come to be seen as the message and not the medium.
David G. Jones
A good education should leave much to be desired.
Alan Gregg
The less people know, the more they talk. The less people understand, the more they try to explain.
Vironika Tugaleva
The pen is truly mightier than the sword. Unless you're holding a pen and the other guy's holding a sword.
Dave Besseling
If the universe doesn't care about us and if we're an accident in a remote corner of the universe, in some sense it makes us more precious. The meaning in our lives is provided by us; we provide our own meaning.
Lawrence M. Krauss
In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a [?], like a collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing.
Elon Musk
Surely there must be in a world of manifold beautiful things something among them for me. And always, while I am still young, there is that dim light, the Future. But it is indeed a dim, dim light, and ofttimes there's a treachery in it.
Mary MacLane
I love you too much to lose you over something so little. “Roommates With Benefits.
Nicole Williams
Women think that they can make sad things go away by knowing the reason that they happened.
Johanna Skibsrud
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
I knew very little about the religion. [Christianity] It had a reputation for few gods and great violence. But good schools.
Yann Martel
The nose can’t help catchin’ what the ears get sick with. Yessir, rock bands just sweat evil. Evil’s been around for a long time, ever since rocks started getting real hot and making a lot of noise as they exploded out o’ the ground and evil spirits wisped out of hell. If a band ever uses a fog machine, hold your breath so you don’t become possessed by one.
M.C. Humphreys
«…you’re too old not to have had, how shall I say, certain experiences. You’ve had bad internet dates. You’ve had people be creeps to you. You’ve seen what you’ve seen; you’ve felt what you’ve felt. Ideology is for people who don’t trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world»«I feel like I am going mad»«Madness is actually quite rare in individuals. It’s groups of people who go mad. Countries, cults ... religions»
Douglas Coupland
We resent the thought that anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share the pleasure with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when we find out interest in life returning to us.
L.M. Montgomery
The council is a place where everyone schemes against everyone else, and people talk incessantly about Power with a capital "Pow".
James Alan Gardner
-Because they're free.-They might look free, but they aren't. Believe me. You're free.-How am I free?-You're free to be modest. You're free to not smoke up. You're free to be here and listen and not respond to the nonsense that Hanna spouts. You're very calm, and you're very comfortable with yourself.
David Bergen
Our body hears whatever is in our minds and responds.
Akiroq Brost
Schizo. It didn't matter how many times Dr. Gill compared it to a disease or physical disability, it wasn't the same thing. It just wasn't. I had schizophrenia. If I saw two guys on the sidewalk, one in a wheelchair and one talking talking to himself, which would I rush to open a door for, and which would I cross the road to avoid?
Kelley Armstrong
Have Fun Storming the Castle!
Michael O'Brien
In a fieldI am the absenceof field.This isalways the case.Wherever I amI am what is missing.
Mark Strand
What we most love is not what we know, but what knows us and draws us. . . . (78)
Ravi Ravindra
Then the shit hit the fan.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Awareness is a great neutralizer of negative emotions." Living Beyond the Five Senses
Teresa L. DeCicco
Emotion goes inside-out. Emotional contagion, though, suggests that the opposite is also true. If I can make you smile, I can make you happy. If I can make you frown, I can make you sad. Emotion, in this sense, goes outside-in.
Malcolm Gladwell
You were just worried about me." An exhale, relieved that I had understood. "Yeah"I turned. "Because you think I'm worth it"He put his fingers under my chin. "I absolutely think your worth it.""But you don't think you are."His mouth opened. Shut."That's what this is about, Derek. You won't let us worry about you because you don't think you're worth it. But I do. I absolutely do.
Kelley Armstrong
The best inheritance a parent can give his children is a few minutes of his time each day.
O.A. Battista
A coffin... I'm in a coffin.The stories told to frighten children and old men, of warriors injured in battle and believed dead by their comrades, only to wake up buried six feet beneath the ground, assailed me and i started to breathe too quickly, using too much air. Already i felt as if i was suffocating, trapped underground. Had they thought i'd lost too much blood? Was my heartbeat too soft or slow? Could Kest and Brasti truly have been foolish enough to think that-?BrastiI bellowed, and the sound of my voice echoed over the surface of the wood around me, "I'm going to fucking kill you this time you heartless son of a bitch!"A distant guffaw was followed by the sound of footsteps running towards me and brasti calling, "Hang on, hang on, I'm coming..."Blinding candlelight forced me to close my eyes as my prison lifted off me, and when i opened them again i saw that i hadn't actually been inside the coffin at all- Brasti had just removed the lid from one and flipped the rest over top of me.
Sebastien de Castell
What makes one strong is not the ability to confront adversity and cruelty, but rather the ability to love in spite of it.
Christopher Earle
Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite.
Steven Pinker
Then he said the funny thing was the old man himself had left home when he was a kid, after a fight with his own father. The father lit into him for using the wheelbarrow."It was this way. They always carried the feed to the horses, pail by pail. In the winter, when the horses were in the stalls. So my father took the notion to carry it to them in the wheelbarrow. Naturally it was a lot quicker. But he got beat. For laziness. That was the way they were, you know. Any change of any kind was a bad thing. Efficiency was just laziness, to them. That's the peasant thinking for you.
Alice Munro
A lady never shows her anger, she channels it to further her ends.
Erik Buchanan
Awful things, children. Needy, self-centered tyrants, the boys all teeth and firsts, the girls all claws and spit. Gathering into sniveling packs and sniffing out vulnerabilities — and woe to the child not cunning enough to hide their own — the others would close in like the grubby shark they were. Great pastime, savaging someone.
Steven Erikson
I am asked – and I’m speaking to young Canada now – are there rewards in public life? There are – not monetary but there is a tremendous satisfaction in being able to say I tried, I stood.
John G. Diefenbaker
The French believe that all errors are distant, someone else's fault. Americans believe that there is no distance, no difference, and therefore that there are no errors, that any troubles are simple misunderstandings, consequent on your not yet having spoken English loudly enough.
Adam Gopnik
If we seek the pleasures of love passion should be occasional and common sense continual.
Robertson Davies
I know my time will come soon enough, but I will not dwell on it. What is the purpose? We might as well dwell on the work of our teeth or on the mechanics of our walk. It is there, it will always be there, and I don't intend to spend my glorious hours looking over my shoulder to see death's icy face.
Alberto Manguel
If I'm not a writer, who am I?
Jacquelyn Middleton
…and all the other tools that mistook information for knowledge
Louise Penny
I was not always a Muslim, but once I was led into the absorption of prayer and the mysteries of the Qur’an, something troubled in me became still.
Camilla Gibb
Hurry always empties a soul.
Ann Voskamp
You got this. Make it happen.
Danielle LaPorte
Our character isn’t defined by the battles we win or lose, but by the battles we dare to fight.
Robert Beatty
There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem the more likely one will treat others with respect kindness and generosity. People who do not experience self-love have little or no capacity to love others.
Nathaniel Branden
Here is an equation worth remembering: Five dollars earned minus seven dollars spent = Unhappy Life." (Life Hacks, p.51)
Jon Morrison
A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.
Brian Tracy
They were strong singers, with swift minds and open good humor--arrogant enough to think they could stand on a stage and dogged enough to have done the work to get there.
Vivien Shotwell
...you need to travel to see the ocean - I don't need the ocean - I have the sky...
John Geddes