Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 102

After they had skated around the pond several times, my father asked my mother to marry him. I expect he did it awkwardly, but awkwardness in men was a sign of sincerity then.
Margaret Atwood
The one great universal in the study of violence is that most of it is committed by fifteen-to-thirty-year-old men.
Steven Pinker
Tell me this. What is it with men and feeling like they have to act like self-destructive superheroes whenever trouble shows up?”“It’s the only way we know how to love.
Andrew Pyper
There were no men in this painting, but it was about men, the kind who caused women to fall. I did not ascribe any intentions to these men. They were like the weather, they didn't have a mind. They merely drenched you or struck you like lightning and moved on, mindless as blizzards. Or they were like rocks, a line of sharp slippery rocks with jagged edges. You could walk with care along between the rocks, picking your steps, and if you slipped you'd fall and cut yourself, but it was no use blaming the rocks.
Margaret Atwood
He's lost something, some illusion I used to think was necessary to him. He's come to realize he too is human. Or is this a performance, for my benefit, to show me he's up-to-date? Maybe men shouldn't have been told about their own humanity. It's only made them uncomfortable. It's only made them trickier, slier, more evasive, harder to read.
Margaret Atwood
Claude rubs the back of his neck and wrinkles his nose, about to tell me he was never sad. I believe this is called bravado and is not limited to lawyers, or even men, although that combination makes it almost unavoidable.
Rachel Hartman
Ah men,why do you want all this attention?I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutelynecessary. What do you have to offer meI can't find otherwiseexcept humiliation? Which I no longerneed.
Margaret Atwood
I won’t have you calling me Miss Tuttle. That’s what the doc calls me. And the lady at the bank. One takes my temperature and the other my money. Friends don’t take anything—they give.
Diane Lynn McGyver
Do you know, Mrs. Allan, I'm thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so much." "True friendship is a very helpful thing indeed," said Mrs. Allan, "and we should have a very high ideal of it , and never sully it by any failure in truth and sincerity. I fear the name of friendship is often degraded to a kind of intimacy that had nothing of real friendship in it.
L.M. Montgomery
You don’t have to sleep with guys,” I whispered, “to make them like you.”Kya stared at me for a moment with heavy eyelids. “You don’t get it, do you, Gracie? I sleep with them so they won’t like me.” My heart broke for her a little more.
Janet Gurtler
I may not be happy with you right now, but I still love you.
Janet Gurtler
Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and the junk food as far away as possble.
Krista Scott-Dixon
He waited a moment, as they walked side by side through the camp, and then asked, 'Sir, if there's something we can't handle how do we handle it anyway?' She either grunted or laughed from the same place that grunts came from. 'Sawtooth wedges and keep going, Beak. Throw back whatever is thrown at us. Keep going, until. . .' 'Until what?' 'It's all right, Beak, to die alongside your comrades. It's all right. Do you understand me?' 'Yes sir, I do. It is all right, because they're my friends.' 'That's right, Beak.
Steven Erikson
Friendship is a special kind of love. More than endless, more than true. When friends parted ways no matter the distance, expect them to keep coming back to you.
John K.
The three of you were pretty cute last night, with all that touchy-feely crap.""Yeah, that lasted for about two minutes before you dragged Evan back over to the bar.""Dude, we were hunting Turkey. [drinking bourbon] it was important." Chris grins. "That boy can drink, I'll give him that." "That's big of you. From the way you were hanging off each other by the end of the night, I was thinking I might get Jeff all to myself." Chris shoots him a look. "Is that what you want? If you had your way? Just Jeff?" Dan Isn't really ready to answer that question, not even from Chris. "Wow, you'd switch teams just for me? You'd steal Evan away just so I could take his boyfriend? That's sweet man, really."Dan knows that Chris recognizes the deflection, but he lets Dan get away with it. "That's the kind if friend I am, Dan. Maybe you should take a lesson - the next time I need a wingman in a straight bar, it wouldn't kill you to step up." "Yeah, okay, I'll keep that on mind.
Kate Sherwood
It's not that easy to find someone I can relate to. I'm tough to crack because I'm shy.
Kristin Kreuk
Spiritual friends help us most when they make clear that their job is to point the way, not to lead the way. And the Way to which they should point is Jesus.
David G. Benner
True friends are always near, the Goddess said. Beneath the eyelids on a stormy night, around the bend in a wicked dream, hearkening to the future by the chimes of their companion’s call.
Mary-Jean Harris
This is going to seem bitter but I don't mean it that way, V., I'm just stating a fact here: you'll only ever call me if I call you first. Have you noticed that? If I call and leave a message you'll call me back, but you will never call me first.And I think that's kind of a horrible thing, V., when you're supposed to be someone's friend. I always come to you. You always say you're my friend but you'll never come to me and I think I have to stop listening to your words, V., and take stock instead of your actions. My friend C. thinks my expectations of friendship are too high but I don't think he's right. Take care, V. I'll miss you.
Emily St. John Mandel
Many relationships are give & take but the most successful ones are give & give.
Mark Hewer
You should find something better to do with your time,” Mandy told him. “I spend my time shooting people, and then I take them to darkrooms and blow them up.”“…Come again?” Alecto questioned with a tone of alarm in his voice. “I take photographs and develop them myself, I’ve got my own darkroom… it was a joke,” Mandy laughed. “I love photography and I’m gonna be a photojournalist someday.”“Really?” Alecto asked. For the first time since she’d met him, he sounded slightly enthusiastic. “…I take photographs and I film my own home movies, I have a darkroom as well… but I can’t be a photojournalist like you… I can’t be anything… still, at least I can take photographs, it’s fun.
Rebecca McNutt
To my beloved friends, there’s simply no life without you guys. Thanks for the advice and the love and the billion dinners and laughs. Without you all . . . I’d look for new friends and get them.
Martin Short
Ideally, friends are people with whom we can be our true selves, with whom we can fearlessly let our guard down. (Arguably, a close friend is someone with whom we can allow ourselves to enter the daydreaming attentional mode, with whom we can switch in and out of our different modes of attention without feeling awkward.)
Daniel J. Levitin
strangers were just people he hadn’t become friends with yet.
Eric Walters
Alecto Sydney Steele, an entity of few words whom society managed to overlook as it rapidly dove into the 21st century. Everything about him, his interests, his friends, his own life, was constantly in danger of becoming an anachronism. And caught up in that mess was Mearth, not exactly evil in nature but just misunderstood. A very long time ago Alecto’s life had been all incandescent sparkles and Kodachrome, but that was before the environmental movement changed Mearth from a perfectly nice and kind guardian, to a deranged and malevolent monster.
Rebecca McNutt
Of the Phoenix kids, the one Derek got along best with was Daniel. In him, Daniel had found a good sparring partner. And a plotting partner, too. Derek wasn’t just the biggest and strongest in our group. He was also the smartest. Scary, off-the-charts smart. That intimidated Daniel a little at first—he’s bright, but he needs to work for his grades. But Derek wasn’t a show-off or a know-it-all, so they got past that and we would hang out together, the two guys, Chloe, and I planning and plotting our future, bouncing ideas off one another.
Kelley Armstrong
Hey Alecto, film this!” she called out. With the slide being as tall as a two-storey house, it felt slightly risky being up there. “On second thought, why don’t you come up here? It’s a blast being up here.”“I don’t really like to be in high places,” said Alecto as he filmed her, the camera lens reflecting the entire playground, which was partially secluded by tall trees that cast otherworldly shadows dancing across the ground.“If you don’t like being in high places, then why’d you take so many drugs in the seventies?” Mandy questioned jokingly. “Do you want me to go up there and push you off the top of that slide?” Alecto threatened coldly.“You’d never do that, we’re best friends!” Mandy pointed out. She reached over and picked a bright red maple flower from one of the long branches of the trees, tossing it down to him. “Even in this failing 21st century, where people are cell phone addicts and crude humor and violence is the norm, even when society falls apart and drowns in its own mistakes, we’ll still be best friends!” She looked incredibly eccentric, never mind the fact that she was an adult woman wearing a trippy rainbow Pucci dress from the 1970’s, standing on top of a slide at a children’s playground. Alecto didn’t seem to mind, he just continued to film her with his camera like she’d asked him to.
Rebecca McNutt
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
I know you’re in there, Mercedes,” Faye says. “I can see your dirty Converse shoes. You really should get a new pair.”“Did you see it?” I croak. “If you saw it, you probably saw a lot more of me. You probably shouldn’t be seen talking to me. And I should probably switch schools.”“That’s the thing,” Faye says, stopping right outside the stall door and rapping on the metal with her fist.“What’s the thing?” I say, pushing my shoe against the toilet paper dispenser, making no move to let her in.“I never was any good at doing what people tell me.”And like that, her head appears under the stall door, followed by her body. She pulls herself in and wipes her hands on her jeans.I raise my eyebrows. “You know how disgusting that floor is?” I say. “Janitorial service at this school leaves a lot to be desired.”She cocks her head and puts her hands on her hips. She looks like what I imagine a stern parent would look like, not that I know from experience. I wonder if she got that posture from Lydia.“First of all, you didn’t let me in, so I had no choice.
Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
When I was in junior high school, I used to think that Disney's 1990's paranormal television program 'So Weird' was every kid's ideal life - not going to school, living on a tour bus, having rockstar parents, traveling all over North America and never staying in one place for more than a week or so. Of course, eventually the realization hits you that the kids out there who really do live like this, pulling up stakes every week and never staying with their friends or having a permanent residence, aren't really happy.
Rebecca McNutt
I used to think to myself that I was the last kind of person who should have a guardian angel, but then I realized that maybe my type of person is the kind who angels come to first.
Rebecca McNutt
The patches are the stories. Hold onto that. And the muddy zigzag of ducktape against the cracked doorglass. There's four kids who sleep here, a nuff for the fingers on each otherses hands. There's room in each of them for one important thing. They're a band. It's not they're in a band. They're a band. Four spikes of ducktape, up and down, like mountain peaks or a sawblade. Every band's got a sign, something to sew on your jacket, gouge on the wall at a show. Four spikes up and down say MEATHEADS, and you picked a fucked window to knock at, tourist. They're the best band in the world.
Noah Wareness
He watched over word and thought and deed as jealously as if her clear eyes were to pass judgement on it... She held over him the unconscious influence that every girl, whose ideals are high and pure, wields over her friends; an influence that would endure as long as she was faithful to those ideals and which she would certainly lose if she were ever false to them.
L.M. Montgomery
I'd rather be a friendless loser than have a bunch of friends who secretly hated me. (spoken by Massie Block)
Lisi Harrison
You should write a book," Matrick suggested.Kit snorted. "Who wants to read the self-pitying lamentations of an old revenant?""There's your title right there," said Ganelon.
Nicholas Eames
Ganelon sighed. "Slowhand...""Never again," Clay said. "Where you stand, I stand.
Nicholas Eames
Despite this, his prejudice against helmets remained unchanged. You had your pride, Ganelon had told him once, or you had nothing.
Nicholas Eames
Thanks to Lana Turner, Eleven Eleven, The Nation, LIT Magazine (USA), Critical Quarterly (UK), Beautiful Outlaw Press, no press, The Capilano Review, cv2, Rhubarb and Centre A Gallery (Canada).
Erín Moure
You know you're my best friend, right?' he said.I shrugged. I guessed it was true. Now that I wasn't going to be at the parade, they would all hate me. Everything had been carefully choreographed, and me not being there would throw them all off. I realized that kids like Theo and me weren't supposed to have real friends. We were supposed to be all alone and confused. By being each other's friend, we were defying our laws of gravity.
Heather O'Neill
We are both going to pray that we may live together all our lives and die the same day.
L.M. Montgomery
Friends are the most important part of your life. Treasure the tears, treasure the laughter, but most importantly, treasure the memories.
Dave Brenner
Some people you can't be friends with, not when you've been something more.
Graham McNamee
I think of how people can betray me simply by not caring enough to hide the fact of how little they care.I think of how the person who needs the other person the least in a relationship is the stronger member.
Douglas Coupland
Even friends need private spaces, if only within the depths of their own souls, where no one else is allowed to intrude.
Mary Balogh
You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.
Laurence J. Peter
If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll never be and you need not waste time in trying.
L.M. Montgomery
Without the dreamers who write science fiction and other imaginary material we'd still be sitting in caves ... if we weren't already extinct.
William C. Samples
Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond, I read about them and I tried to imagine what they would be like ... When I saw a real diamond in a lady's ring one day I was so disappointed I cried. Of course, it was very lovely but it wasn't my idea of a diamond.
L.M. Montgomery
By using repetition, images, and other strategies - all of which communicate truths in ways that are not cognitively or propositional - marketing forms us into the kind of persons who want to buy beer to have meaningful relationships, or to buy a car to be respected, or buy the latest thing to come along simply to satisfy the desire that has been formed and implanted in us. It is important to appreciate that these disciplinary mechanisms transmit values and truth claims, but not via propositions or cognitive means; rather, the values are transmitted more covertly...This covertness of the operation is also what makes it so powerful: the truths are inscribed in us through the powerful instruments of imagination and ritual.
James K.A. Smith
If this were a proper world, beautiful faces would belong to beautiful people. Good people with kind hearts and clever minds would always have bright eyes and dazzling smiles, and bad people would have scraggly hair and warty noses. That way if you saw one of them coming, you could cross to the other side of the street and avoid them altogether. But this is not a proper world. In our world, many bad people look quite nice, and many good people are not beautiful at all. Many good people aren't pretty or cute or even interesting-looking.
Brit Trogen
Around three a.m. he feels a presence in the room. He sees, for the pulse of a moment, a figure at the foot of his bed, against the wall or painted onto it perhaps, not quite discernible in the darkness of foliage beyond the candlelight. He mutters something, something he had wanted to say, but there is silence and the slight brown figure, which could be just a night shadow, does not move. A poplar. A man with plumes. A swimming figure. And he would not be so lucky, he thinks, to speak to the young sapper again.tHe stays awake in any case this night, to see if the figure moves towards him. Ignoring the tablet that brings painlessness, he will remain awake till the light dies out and the smell of candle smoke drifts into his room and into the girl's room farther down the hall. If the figure turns around there will be paint on his back, where he slammed in grief against the mural of trees. When the candle dies out he will be able to see this.tHis hand reaches out slowly and touches his book and returns to his dark chest. Nothing else moves in the room. [298]
Michael Ondaatje
You don’t read to exercise the mind but to take voyages
John Geddes
when you ARE imagining you might as well imagine something worth while
L.M. Montgomery
Angie was a border crosser, a wetback, a worker in the immigrant sweatshop they call this city. On days like this I understand her like a woman instead of a child. Everybody thought she was a whore. She wasn’t. She tried to step across the border of who she was and who she might be. They wouldn’t let her. She didn’t believe it herself so she stepped across into a whole other country.
Dionne Brand
He ached for creation. For life to somehow rise from the drawings in his sketching book. For his own energy, his own impressions to swirl and spin on a canvas. For a dream city he had tacked above his bed.
C.S. Richardson
I went up on the hill and walked about until twilight had deepened into an autumn night with a benediction of starry quietude over it. I was alone but not lonely. I was a queen in halls of fancy.
L.M. Montgomery
Great imaginations are the breeding ground for great accomplishments!Great imaginations are like horses, they need guidance and proper nurturing, only then do they offer the world of adventure they promise.
Marilynn Dawson
The Subconscious mind can not tell the difference between what's real and what's imagined.
Bob Proctor
Napoleon Hill said "The Imagination is the most powerful most miraculous inconceivably powerful force that the world's ever known
Bob Proctor
Oh, here we are at the bridge. I'm going to shut my eyes tight. I'm always afraid going over bridges. I can't help imagining that perhaps, just as we get to the middle, they'll crumple up like a jackknife and nip us. So I shut my eyes. But I always have to open them for all when I think we're getting near the middle. Because, you see, if the bridge did crumple up I'd want to see it crumple. What a jolly rumble it makes! I always like the rumble part of it. Isn't it splendid there are so many things to like in this world?
L.M. Montgomery