Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 34

The real failure is to rob this world of the contribution only you can make, and to fail to make work that truly gives you that 'this is what I was created to do' feeling that has no equal.
David duChemin
I think of us as a people who inoculate ourselves against a plague of insanity with a powerful anti-idiotic called science fiction. I think sf is a literature which by its very nature requires that you be at least a little sane, that you know at least a little something. You must abdicate the right to be ignorant in order to enjoy science fiction, which most people are unwilling to do; and you must learn, if not actually how to think things through, at least what the trick looks like when it's done. Frequent injections will keep a lot of madness away.
Spider Robinson
Anyone who pretends to "understand" Latin America is a fool.
Michael Hogan
Worry about your own neck. Don’t waste time worrying what others may or may not think. If someone is rude, if they disrespect you, recognize that this is an issue with them and not you. Don’t let it change how you behave. Be the same kind, loving and compassionate person as always. Don’t fuel the negativity. Always strive to carry peace in your heart, wherever you go. It will help to keep you in a positive frame of mind.
Akiroq Brost
To be truly stylish (as opposed to merely "in style", which is the opposite) is to be unabashedly one's self, without reference to the fashions and demands of a sweltering crowd.
Michael Harris
Most of us save our best behavior for those whom we barely know and show our worst side to those we know the best.
Sheila Wray Gregoire
Armed with the new right to sell their products back to host societies, they can bleed both producing and buying populations at the same time. That is why under new international "free trade" agreements private corporations and businesses have increasingly demanded that governments deregulate and lower taxes so that they are not obliged to pay the cost of sustaining the life of host-societies or their environments.
John McMurtry
Once upon a time there was a woman who was just like all women. And she married a man who was just like all men. And they had some children who were just like all children. And it rained all day.The woman had to skewer the hole in the kitchen sink, when it was blocked up.The man went to the pub every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The other nights he mended his broken bicycle, did the pool coupons, and longed for money and power.The woman read love stories and longed for things to be different.The children fought and yelled and played and had scabs on their knees.In the end they all died.
Elizabeth Smart
If you are able to judge God so easily, you certainly can judge the world. You must choose two of your children to spend eternity in God's new heavens and new earth....And you must choose three of your children to spend eternity in hell.....I am only asking you to do something that you believe God does. He knows every person ever conceived, and he knows them so much more deeply and clearly than you will ever know your own children...You believe he will condemn most to an eternity of torment, away from his presence and apart from his love."Mack: "I don't want to be the judge...I can't do this." You suppose then that God does this so easily, but you cannot?"This couldn't be real. How could God ask him to choose among his own children? Even if Katie or Josh, or Jon or Tyler committed some heinous crime, he still wouldn't do it. He couldn't! For him, it wasn't about their performance; it was about his love for them. Mack: "I can't, I can't....Could I go instead?....I'll go in their place...Could I do that?" He fell at her feet crying and begging now. "Please let me go for my children..I am begging you. Please...Please..."-"Now you sound like Jesus.....That is how Jesus loves.
William Paul Young
I do not want God to give me what I want; I trust Him to give me what I need. The truth is, He is infinitely wiser than I am. If we always get what we ask for, I for one will cease to pray.
Gary Inrig
That’s what all art is for. Your creations can become anything to anyone. I’ve realized there’s nothing wrong with letting people escape for a few hours. Plus you should hear about all the sex lives I’m saving.
Karina Halle
Are we praying?" "If you have to ask, you probably aren't.
Allan Dare Pearce
I think that emotions affect you as much as x-rays and vitamins and car crashes.
Douglas Coupland
...she herself loved the character of Elizabeth Bennet. "I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know.
Carol Shields
Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context.
Steven Erikson
I was attracted to girly boys and boyish girls, or girls who later became boys. Boy were always going to be part of the equation.
Zoe Whittall
People with character are capable of long obedience in the same direction, of staying attached to people and causes and callings through thick and thin. People with character also have scope. They are not infinitely flexible, free-floating, and solitary. They are anchored by permanent attachments to important things. In the realm of the intellect, they have a set of permanent convictions about fundamental truths. In the realm of emotion, they are enmeshed in a web of unconditional loves. In the realm of action, they have a permanent commitment to tasks that cannot be completed in a single lifetime.
David Brooks
I don't switch much, don't really want many people to fuck me, because there's a whole code, unwritten but no less rigid than if it were chiseled in stone, about how Tops Must be, how Butches Must Be, and it does not include taking off one's pants. It does not include admitting to one's own desires, only quietly serving the desires of others. It certainly does not include taking a break once in a while to inhabit some other gender, role, or sensibility, even for half a delightful, sweaty hour, in the company of someone who feels like a mirror of me rather than a complementary piece I can fit myself against.
S. Bear Bergman
In the eleventh century obese English king William the Conqueror took to bed and consumed nothing but alcohol to shed pounds, a practice many of his countrymen seem to continue to this day.
David Sax
Behavioral science is not for sissies.
Steven Pinker
A child isn’t born bitter. I point no fingers as to who tainted the clean, pure pool of my childhood. Let’s just say that when I realized that I didn’t want to grow up, the damage was already done. Knowing that being grown up was no swell place to be means that you are grown up enough to notice. And you can’t go back from there. You have to forge another route, draw your own map.
Hiromi Goto
We did make use, from time to time, of candles, neckties, scarves, shoelaces, a little water-color paintbrush, her hairbrush, butter, whipped cream, strawberry jam, Johnson’s Baby Oil, my Swedish hand vibrator, a fascinating bead necklace she had, miscellaneous common household items, and every molecule of flesh that was exposed to air or could be located with strenuous search.
Spider Robinson
It is only by seeing beauty in everything that we can see it in any one single thing, day after day. Don't run into the arms of obsession, for that quickly fades. Long lasting love comes from an open, loving heart.
Vironika Tugaleva
My sincere thanks to friends and family, especially my mother, father, brother, and Mandy, who continue to love and support me despite my obsessions.
Jonathan Ball
Me being in love with a girl and wanting her to be with me, doing what I need to do to make her stay with me; it affects no one, yet it’s terrifying to people and they think you’re a monster.
Sara Quin
Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
Laurence J. Peter
Although terrifying, the evil ghost will probably pose no real danger to you or your family. On the other hand, if you have a demonic infestation, your entire household is in very real danger. A demonic entity will not usually confront you or induce you to flee the home. Because, unlike the evil ghost, the demon does not actually want you to leave. On the contrary, it wants you to stick around so it can destroy your life and sully your soul from the inside.
Alexei Maxim Russell
There's always this one girl. She's desperate and she's weird and she's jealous, and you're stuck with her, no matter how hard you try to get her off your back. Just throw some really fucked-up self-esteem issues into the mix and you have Kara.
Courtney Summers
When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness.
Vincent Starrett
Nothing is too small to know and nothing too big to attempt.
William Van Horne
To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing--I'm sorry, I would rather not go on.
Yann Martel
It feels like I’m stuck in one spot. It’s been this way for a long time. I know you understand, but now you’re moving on without me. And I—I’m not ready to be alone.
Brent Jones
You were at the party on Friday night, weren't you?" I didn't mentioned I'd followed him into the woods.He leaned back in his chair, his legs sprawled out. His boots nudged the bottom ruffle of my skirt. "Aye."Aye? Seriously? Could he be any hotter?Unless he had been looking for his girlfriend at the party.Not hot."I was supposed to meet my cousin," he elaborated, "but I didn't find her,"Hot again.
Alyxandra Harvey
Your mother sets you up blind dates? With guys like that?" The corners of his mouth twitched. "She doesn't like you very much, does she?
Kelley Armstrong
Almost every successful person begins with two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so.
David Brooks
When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.
Alanis Obomsawin
I'm planting a tree to teach me to gather strength from my deepest roots.
Andrea Koehle Jones
His eyes are a hazy swirl ofgray, like a thick mass of clouds gathering before an impending storm
Elle Kennedy
I loved taking off. In my own house, I seemed to be often looking for a place to hide - sometimes from the children but more often from the jobs to be done and the phone ringing and the sociability of the neighborhood. I wanted to hide so that I could get busy at my real work, which was a sort of wooing of distant parts of myself.
Alice Munro
I try to live without you,everytime I do I feel dead.
Three Days Grace
...it saddens me that she has to grow up and make friends with humans. I hear the future coming for her. Stomp, stomp, stomp.
Catherine Austen
Except for a couple of hours in the morning which I passed in the company of a sage I stayed in bed without food only a few mouthfuls of water “you are a fine looking old man” I said to myself in the mirror “and what is more you have the correct attitude You don’t care if it ends or if it goes on And as for the women and the music there will be plenty of that in Paradise” Then I went to the Mosque of Memory to express my gratitude
Leonard Cohen
Her marble tears run down her marble face.A stranger is someone who has no handkerchief.Who has no words to say.Whose shadow mind is burningas he sits watching her handsand thinks how rare!to see a Romantalkwith no gestures at all.
Anne Carson
Life and death are two banks of the same river. Time is the boat on which we travel from one to the other, over and over.
Vinita Kinra
I tried to visualize my jealousy as a yellowy-brown cloud boiling around inside me, then going out through my nose like smoke and turning into a stone and falling down into the ground. That did work a little. But in my visualization a plant covered with poison berries would grow out of the stone, whether I wanted it to or not.
Margaret Atwood
how you love yourself ishow you teach othersto love you
Rupi Kaur
I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.
L.M. Montgomery
I can't help thinking that caring possibly is the riskiest enterprise known to man. But how stop caring?
Charlotte Vale Allen
ROSE: I love you, Jack.JACK: No...don’t say your goodbyes, Rose. Don’t you give up. Don’t do it.ROSE: I’m so cold.JACK: You’re going to get out of this...you’re going to go on and you’re going to make babies and watch them grow and you’re going to die an old lady, warm in your bed. Not here...Not this night. Do you understand me?ROSE: I can’t feel my body.JACK: Rose, listen to me. Winning that ticket was the best thing that ever happened to me. It brought me to you. And I’m thankful, Rose. I’m thankful. You must do me this honor...promise me you will survive....that you will never give up...not matter what happens...no matter how hopeless...promise me now, and never let go of that promise.ROSE: I promise.JACK: Never let go.ROSE: I promise. I will never let go, Jack. I’ll never let go.
James Cameron
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
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you will ever have.
Eckhart Tolle
The man may be the head of the household. But the woman is the neck, and she can turn the head whichever way she pleases.
Nia Vardalos
We live in a world where we give our pounds to those who have too much and our pennies to those who have too little
Dean Griffiths
...the real absurdity is that to love is to suffer, but the reverse isn't always true...
John Geddes
...you do violence with your words if you force them - art is given - the words received, moment by moment from unseen hands - call it a Muse ...
John Geddes
A design can excel at one challenge only by compromising at others.
Steven Pinker
But I have already told the beginning, so right now it's the middle. And Zeb is in the middle of the story about Zeb. He is in the middle of his own story.I am not in this part of the story; it hasn't come to the part with me. But I'm waiting, far off in the future. I'm waiting for the story of Zeb to join up with mine. The story of Toby. The story I am in right now, with you.
Margaret Atwood
The joy of reading with our children doesn't stop as they, and we, get older; it simply changes.
Paul Kropp
Don’t you think it’s better to continue reading than to just close the book?
Rebecca McNutt
Is that the way you live your life, logic over emotion?” “That’s the way I run my business. Up to now, there hasn’t been any overlap.
Alexia Adams