Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 20

Your mind is the paintbrush, the earth is your easel. Create your masterpeice
L.J Vanier
Many moral advances have taken the form of a shift in sensibilities that made an action seem more ridiculous than sinful, such as dueling, bullfighting, and jingoistic war. And many effective social critics, such as Swift, Johnson, Voltaire, Twain, Oscar Wilde, Bertrand Russell, Tom Lehrer, and George Carlin have been smart-ass comedians rather than thundering prophets. What in our psychology allows the joke to be mightier than the sword?Humor works by confronting an audience with an incongruity, which may be resolved by switching to another frame of reference. And in that alternative frame of reference, the butt of the joke occupies a lowly or undignified status. ...Humor with a political or moral agenda can stealthily challenge a relational model that is second nature to an audience by forcing them to see that it leads to consequences that the rest of their minds recognize as absur
Steven Pinker
Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.
George Iles
And yet... you wouldn't want it to stop hurting... you wouldn't want to forget your little mother even if you could.
L.M. Montgomery
Do you understand the sadness of geography?
Michael Ondaatje
She thought often of her own death, but without fear, loss having been her only belonging in this life. For years, acceptance had been her only means of survival. She knew that no matter how miserable or wretched life became, all she could do with her meek piece of time was sustain it. Decades of guilt, lost faith, the betrayal by those few people she'd let herself love - it was worth enduring these things, if only for the gift of a single, exalted moment. And such moments happened, even frequently, in the lives of people wise enough to see them.
Esi Edugyan
What if making peace with our warring hearts—peace within—is the first step to world peace?
Jared Brock
All soldiers felt the same thing going into battle, whether they admitted it or not: fear. Fear of failure, fear of dying, fear of watching their friends die, fear of being wounded and living out the rest of their days crippled or maimed. The fear was always there, and it would devour you if you let it. Des knew how to turn that fear to his own advantage. Take what makes you weak and turn it into something that makes you strong. Transform the fear into anger and hate: hatred of the enemy; hatred of the Republic and the Jedi. The hate gave him strength, and the strength brought him victory.
Drew Karpyshyn
Things aren't different. Things are things.
William Gibson
Tiberius sparred, “Mr. Monogamy doesn’t find my shenanigans funny? Oh thank god, if you did I’d have to chuck it all and join a monastery.” Thorne sparred, “You’d never be able to stop talking long enough.” Frost laughed, “He’d light on fire as soon as he stepped through the gate.” t“Right alongside of you,” Tiberius said, patting Frost’s shoulder. t“Touché,” Frost chuckled. “You do have me there.
Kim Cormack
The place smelled of commodes and playing cards, and before I was halfway to the end I had made a firm resolve never to begin to die. For me it would be all or nothing: no half measures, no lingering on the doorstep.
Alan Bradley
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.
Laurence J. Peter
Except that love - that mysterious, vast, all-encompassing power - could not possibly be contained in a single word.
Mary Balogh
Most of didn’t know how truly good or truly bad we were, and most of us would never be sufficiently tested to find out.
Rachel Cusk
Ever heard of the rule of three? he shouts as we run.No!If you save somebody's life three times, their life belongs to you. You saved my life today, that makes once. Save it twice more an I'm all yers.
Moira Young
Whatever you do, do it with purpose. Being focused is not something to be ashamed of. It is something to be proud of. When you know what are you are doing and have a clear vision of where you are going, you will not need to chase opportunities. Opportunities will seek you. Happiness will chase you. And, instead of being a choice, you will be the one choosing.
Najwa Zebian
Saying 'I could have done more,' Zin, is what marks a man as a man and not a God.
R. Scott Bakker
Excuses fall silent behind self-control, focus, and direction.
Lorii Myers
But you make the rest hard too. Make me work for you. Make me earn your love. It's worth whatever price. Whatever cost. Don't let me come to expect easy with you. Make me want to work hard for you.
Nicole Williams
The ultimate barrier against love is the barrier of the constructed self.
Vironika Tugaleva
It only seems as if you are doing something when you're worrying.
L.M. Montgomery
We have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile. ... We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition
William Gibson
War has changed.It's no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. It's an endless series of proxy battles, fought by mercenaries and machines.War--and it's consumption of life--has become a well-oiled machine.War has changed.ID-tagged soldiers carry ID-tagged weapons, use ID-tagged gear. Nanomachines inside their bodies enhance and regulate their abilities.Genetic control, information control, emotion control, battlefield control…everything is monitored and kept under control.War…has changed.The age of deterrence has become the age of control, all in the name of averting catastrophe from weapons of mass destruction, and he who controls the battlefield, controls history.War…has changed.When the battlefield is under total control, war becomes routine.
David Hayter
I must do whatever I can to find the best partners possible." "Did you kick their butts?" He frowned. "The buttocks are among the least sensitive places to hit someone." I laughed. "It's a figure of speech." "To kick butts. Interesting.
Allison van Diepen
It’s the difference between your wife’s passport photograph and the portraits you took when you gotengaged. Both may have been created with similar technology, but what stands in that great gulf between them are the passion you have for your wife, the knowledge you have of her personality, and your willingness to use your craft, time, and energy to express that. One says, “She looks like this.” The other says, “This is who she is to me. It’s how I feel about her. See how amazing she is?
David duChemin
The longer the silence remains untouched the longer the miscommunication creates its own stories.
Christina Strigas
There is no more hateful person than a Christian who thinks you’ve got your theology wrong.
Sarah Bessey
No one woke up one morning out of the blue and just outright, fully loved themselves. It takes active effort. It takes active presence. You must learn to be more self-aware. You need to find things to be grateful for about yourself. You need to practice that love. Start small, but do it every day. Write it down if it helps. Keep growing the list of self-appreciation and love. Learn to look into the mirror and love the person looking back at you. Find that self-acceptance. Accept yourself not in perfection, but in love. Love the fallible and frail human you are. Develop self-love. If you want to have a successful and happy life you need to learn to become your own friend. You must foster and nurture the relationship you have with yourself. Out of all the people in your life, the one you will be with the longest is yourself. I can't stress enough how important it is to learn to love yourself. Practice it every day.
Akiroq Brost
Not that it isn't great to see you. But it's not so great for you. What'd you do wrong? Laugh at his dick?
Margaret Atwood
Fiction is overrated, Fly. We’ve discussed this. In the time it takes those novelist fuckers to contemplate a few poetic passages, a thousand kids die from malnutrition. Immediacy, man, that’s what counts.
Rawi Hage
It must have been an endless breathing in: between the wish to know and the wish to praise there was no seam.
Margaret Atwood
Her lips were burning with the lies she spoke and yet, he longed to kiss the fire.
Barbara Avon
ME/CFS is not synonymous with depression or other psychiatric ill- nesses. The belief by some that they are the same has caused much con- fusion in the past, and inappropriate treatment.Nonpsychotic depression (major depression and dysthymia), anxiety disorders and somatization disorders are not diagnostically exclusionary, but may cause significant symptom overlap. Careful attention to the timing and correlation of symptoms, and a search for those characteris- tics of the symptoms that help to differentiate between diagnoses may be informative, e.g., exercise will tend to ameliorate depression whereas excessive exercise tends to have an adverse effect on ME/CFS patients.
Bruce M. Carruthers
Smart Risk will shatter the emotional myths to investing and help Canadians see the opportunities in today's volatile market.
Maili Wong
When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
William Gibson
Sustenance! Your health is always the best prescription.
Lorii Myers
It is no rest to be idle.
Paul Peel
Self-governance does not mean no one is responsible. It means everyone is.
Heather Marsh
Where do you go with your broken heart in tow? What do you do with the left over you? And how do you know, when to let go? Where does the good go, where does the good go?
Tegan Quin
There will be peaks of great joy from which to crow and vales of tears out of which to climb. When and why they will happen, no one can say, but they will happen. To all of us. We will all go back and forth from one to the other countless times during a lifetime. This is not some call to bipartisanship between inimical sides. The Happy and the Sad are the same population.
David Rakoff
You can believe whatever you will, as long as you realize: it was your decision!
Akiroq Brost
Change must be measured from a known base line.
Evan Shute
I've learned a lot of things this year...not everyone who smiles at you is your friend. Fear really is terrifying but when you face it, the feeling is euphoric. I can say no and not feel guilty. I can say yes and not feel guilty. I know when to walk away from anything that isn't good for me, but the best thing I learned is that happiness is inside of me and always has been.
Iva Ursano
She never knows when it might strike. The rage. And when it does, she loses her grip on herself—literally. At times, she could swear she sees another self—shiny black phantom, faceless, as though clad in a bodysuit—leaping out of her, pulling the rest of her in its wake. Over the edge.
Ann-Marie MacDonald
Our body hears whatever is in our minds and responds.
Akiroq Brost
I believe we make our own destinies, every last one of us.
Morgan Rhodes
This century faded—as did the last several—and she was Aphrodite again, goddess of lust and pleasure and sex, and she was home.
Liz Meldon
Furthermore, he had beautiful eyes.
Jeramy Dodds
I've come home in love with loneliness
L.M. Montgomery
You can't counter a heroic impulse with a mundane and bourgeois response. You can counter it only with a more compelling heroic vision.
David Brooks
Ars moriendi ars vivendi est: the art of dying is the art of living.
Robert Charles Wilson
The reason Armand Gamache could go there was because it wasn't totally foreign to him. He knew it because he’d seen his own burned terrain, he’d walked off the familiar and comfortable path inside his own head and heart and seen what festered in the dark. And one day Jean Guy Beauvoir would look at his own monsters, and then be able to recognize others. And maybe this was the day and this was the case. He hoped so.
Louise Penny
Who would endure life if it were not for the hope of death?
L.M. Montgomery
O youcan’t tell someone just how lonely he is
Jeramy Dodds
We enter this universe alone in search of microscopic beauty—and while we love, or are loved by others—we leave this world completely alone, having only found infinite sorrow. Despite there being so many of us, each of us tragically realizes that everyone is on a solitary journey. No one else can see what we see, hear what we hear, feel, what we feel. All we have of each other are glimpses of moments, whispers of experiences, memories of the past we wish we could make eternal, but in the end, we become a faint memory in the minds of a few good people.
Bruce Crown
perhaps you know that Ingeborg Bachmann poemfrom the last years of her life that begins"I lose my screams"dear Antigone,I take it as the task of the translatorto forbid that you should ever lose your screams
Anne Carson
A lot of the world seems to repeat itself
Emma Donoghue
Who controls the words controls your thoughts.
Heather Marsh
These wrinkles are nothingThese gray hairs are nothing,This stomach which sagswith old food, these bruisedand swollen ankles, my darkening brain,they are nothing.I am the same boymy mother used to kiss.
Mark Strand
I'm interested in the moment when two objects collide and generate a third. The third object is where the interesting work is.
Bruce Mau