Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 146

The Men of the Ordeal do not march to save the World, Proyas--at least not first and foremost. They march to save their wives and children. Their tribes and their nations. If they learn that the world, their world, slips into ruin behind them, that their wives and daughters may perish for want of their shields, their swords, the Host of Hosts would melt about the edges, then collapse.
R. Scott Bakker
Saddam's politics was the politics of the thug, of violence from the outset of his reign. Realism suggests that some people are not going to be tractable in response to purely peaceable overtures. Indeed, it certainly appears that some individuals, including notably Saddam Hussein, will cheerfully help themselves to a yard for every inch offered by well-meaning peacemakers. When we are dealing with customers as tough as that, there is no alternative to being tough ourselves.
Jan Narveson
It was the seventh of November, 1918. The war was finally over. Maybe it would be declared a holiday and named War's End Day or something equally hopeful and wrong. Wars would break out again. Violence was part of human nature as much as love and generosity.
Claire Holden Rothman
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 don't believe war is a way to solve problems. I think it's wrong. I don't have respect for the people that made the decisions to go on with war. I don't have that much respect for Bush. He's about war, I'm not about war - a lot of people aren't about war.
Avril Lavigne
His men had begun gathering the wounded or stunned into a small group some distance back up the slope. Here and there an animal or human stirred, but not many. There were few cries of pain or fear now. Mostly, it was eerily quiet. Even the insects had ceased their music.
Derek Donais
The guns reminded me that this was just an attempt to punch holes in the darkness that enveloped us now.
Michael Poeltl
Peter had spent his whole life in a town where fights were either drunken and friendly, or silent and petty. True war was foreign to him. He thought of how scared and confused he had been when the battle broke out in the Nest; he was in a different world now.
Jonathan Auxier
Victory is always bittersweet.
Nadia Scrieva
The thing is, you cannot ask people to coexist by having one side bow their heads and rely on a solution that is only good for the other side. What you can do is stop blaming each other and engage in dialogue with one person at a time. Everyone knows that violence begets violence and breeds more hatred. We need to find our way together. I feel I cannot rely on the various spokespersons who claim they act on my behalf. Invariably they have some agenda that doesn't work for me. Instead, I talk to my patients, to my neighbors and colleagues--Jews, Arabs--and I find out they feel as I do: we are more similar than we are different, and we are all fed up with the violence.
Izzeldin Abuelaish
Even as a child, even as my blood-past was drained from me, I understood that if I were strong enough to accept it, I was being offered a second history.
Anne Michaels
That's something that tends to happen with new technologies generally: The most interesting applications turn up on a battlefield, or in a gallery.
William Gibson
War is food and drink and disease and patience and anger and hate and cold and stealth and terror as well as sweet silver and bitter iron and the glitter of arms in the sun or under the moon.
Miles Cameron
Though the contradictions of war seem sudden and simultaneous, history stalks before it strikes. Something tolerated soon becomes something good.
Anne Michaels
The parties with the most gain never show up on the battlefield.
Naomi Klein
Whenever and wherever men have engaged in the mindless slaughter of animals (including other men), they have often attempted to justify their acts by attributing the most vicious or revolting qualities to those they would destory; and the less reason there is for the slaughter, the greater the campaign for vilification.
Farley Mowat
Either greed belongs in a war zone, or it doesn't. You can't unleash it in the name of sparking an economic boom and then be shocked when Halliburton overcharges for everything from towels to gas, when Parsons' sub, sub, sub-contractor builds a police academy where the pipes drip raw sewage on the heads of army cadets and where Blackwater investigates itself and finds it acted honorably. That's just corporations doing what they do and Iraq is a privatized war zone so that's what you get. Build a frontier, you get cowboys and robber barons.
Naomi Klein
Before this war is over,' [Walter] said - or something said through his lips - 'every man and woman and child in Canada will feel it - you, Mary, will feel it - feel it to your heart's core. You will weep tears of blood over it. The Piper has come - and he will pipe until every corner of the world has heard his awful and irresistible music. It will be years before the dance of death is over - years, Mary. And in those years millions of hearts will break.
L.M. Montgomery
Where you are born should not dictate your potential as a human being.
Roméo Dallaire
It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and settle slowly.
Margaret Atwood
You actually cannot sell the idea of freedom, democracy, diversity, as if it were a brand attribute and not reality -- not at the same time as you're bombing people, you can't.
Naomi Klein
I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking into the face of his wife. These are not sins of omission but signs of pre-occuopation.
Michael Ondaatje
Extreme violence has a way of preventing us from seeing the interests it serves.
Naomi Klein
A weapon does not decide whether or not to kill. A weapon is a manifestation of a decision that has already been made.
Steven Galloway
War is what happens when language fails.
Margaret Atwood
Just love everybody!? Do you love everybody, Karma? Could you love Hitler? Answer me that! Could you love Hitler, huh?""I wonder what would have happened if somebody did, Blue?
Frank MacDonald
Most people are as happy as other people decide they should be.
Rebecca McNutt
People will react to you as a result of their own mindset, rather than as a reflection of your worth. Most people use others as mirrors for their own darkness. If you have been hurt by such people, perhaps you can use these experiences to become a different kind of person—one who reflects the light within others instead of using them as mirrors. Maybe your experiences of pain can lead you to being a great leader, someone who lights up the world. Your most painful struggle is ripe with opportunity.
Vironika Tugaleva
I always assumed everybody shared my love for overcast skies. It came as a shock to find out that some people prefer sunshine.
Glenn Gould
Direct democracy is lazy anarchy, for people who don't want to be governed but are too lazy to govern themselves. They want participation served to them.
Heather Marsh
Sometimes to love people, I must completely avoid them. Sometimes, to be strong, I must completely fall apart. Sometimes, to create, I must completely destroy.
Vironika Tugaleva
I remember, as a kid, when I first understood that only half of every tree is visible, that the roots in the soil are equal to the branches in the sky, that a whole other half is underground. It took me a lot longer, well into adulthood, to realize people are like that too.
Elan Mastai
People forget how vulnerable they are despite their shirts and shoes and briefcases, how this hungry and cruel world could strip them, put them in the same position as my beggars.
Rohinton Mistry
Look at that crowd', he said disgustedly. 'They think it's a circus.''And not a single coin are they donating', said Dina.'That's not surprising. Pity can only be shown in small doses. When so many beggars are in one place, the public goes like this' - he put his fists to his eyes, like binoculars.
Rohinton Mistry
We are neither just brains floating around nor just hearts bouncing about.
Ravi Zacharias
Don't let your fear of criticism suffocate your leadership potential. Once you begin to speak your truth, you will discover the people who have been waiting for someone exactly like you. Until you speak up, all you need is the faith that they exist. And I promise you: they do.
Vironika Tugaleva
Sometimes failing is what's needed. I think it can put people in a good mood, to see someone fail. Let people entertain themselves. I think that's one of the reasons people are so lonely in this country. Because they always have to rush out and have someone else in the room entertain them. It's terrible, the loneliness here. People live in coffins...
Rivka Galchen
a lot of timeswe are angry at other peoplefor not doing whatwe should have done for ourselves- responsibility
Rupi Kaur
…People are rivers, always ready to move from one state of being into another. It is not fair, to treat people as if they are finished beings. Everyone is always becoming and unbecoming.
Kathleen Winter
Yet he saw that in all places there was originality, resulting from the human efforts at decoration and ingenious methods of survival.
Michael D. O'Brien
It takes all sorts of people to make a world, as I've often heard, but I think there are some who could be spared,' Anne told her reflection in the east gable mirror that night.
L.M. Montgomery
He was trying to fit this Herakles onto the one he knew.
Anne Carson
Though we might have precious littleIt's still preciousI like that song about this wonderful worldIt's got a sunny point of viewAnd sometimes I feel it's trueAt least for a few of usI like that world, it makes a wonderful songBut there's a darker point of viewBut sadly just as trueFor so many among usThough we might have precious littleIt's still preciousIn the sweetest child there's a vicious streakIn the strongest man there's a child so weakIn the whole wide world there's no magic placeSo you might as well rise put on your bravest faceI like that show where they solve all the murdersAn heroic point of viewIt's got justice and vengeance tooAt least so the story goesI like that story, makes a satisfying caseBut there's a messy point of viewThat's sadly just as trueFor so many among usIn softest voice there's an acid tongueIn the oldest eyes there's a soul so youngIn the shakiest will there's a core of steelOn the smoothest ride there's a squeaky wheelThough we might have precious littleIt's still precious
Rush
And I’ll stop with the lecture now. I don’t like people much—they irritate and annoy me. But I’mfascinated by them anyway.
Michelle Sagara West
Did everyone make the most ghastly blunders at regularly intervals through their life and live to regret them ever afterward? Was everyone's life filled with confusing and contradictory mix of guilt and innocence, hatred and love, concern and unconcern, and any number of other pairings of polar opposites? Or were most people one thing or the other - good or bad, cheerful or crotchety, generous or miserly, and so on.
Mary Balogh
People move around so much in the world, things get lost.
Emma Donoghue
People who have so much of their personality invested in the Internet can’t really survive as whole individuals without it.
Mark A. Rayner
Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the “work” will be done by 20 percent of the participants. In most societies, 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of crimes. Twenty percent of motorists cause 80 percent of all accidents. Twenty percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of all beer. When it comes to epidemics, though, this disproportionality becomes even more extreme: a tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work.
Malcolm Gladwell
I am worried about our tendency to over invest in things and under invest in people.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech communication and for the very cognitive, representational flexibility necessary to become humans.
Daniel J. Levitin
People who are different from other people are always called peculiar,' said Anne.
L.M. Montgomery
People cannot accept their own evil if they do not at the same time feel loved, respected and trusted.
Jean Vanier
Perhaps its not the world that is soundless but we who are deaf.
Margaret Atwood
If you stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you.
Cory Doctorow
A name can't begin to encompass the sum of all her parts. But that's the magic of names, isn't it? That the complex, contradictory individuals we are can be called up complete and whole in another mind through the simple sorcery of a name.
Charles de Lint
As the new work fills my notebooks, I've come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just easier to do it on paper, one step removed.
Charles de Lint
I think if human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn't life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don't they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you'd meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to - like talking to dogs.
Douglas Coupland
She can outstare anyone, and I am almost as good. We’re impervious, we scintillate, we are thirteen. We wear long wool coats with tie belts, the collars turned up to look like those of movie stars, and rubber boots with the tops folded down and men’s work socks inside. In our pockets are stuffed the kerchiefs our mothers make us wear but that we take off as soon as we’re out of their sight. We scorn head coverings. Our mouths are tough, crayon-red, shiny as nails. We think we are friends.
Margaret Atwood
I wish I could run away,” Rudger told Jersey as they both rushed in and out of various patients’ rooms, darting around like little ants. “I can’t leave and be on my own though, not right now, anyway.”“Why?” asked Jersey, waving her flashlight in mid-air.Rudger froze for a second, a regretful haze emanating from his eyes. “It’d break her heart if I left.”“Ain’t that normal? For parents to have mixed feelings about their kids growin’ up?”“Not for me, it isn’t.”Jersey made a pitying face in his direction. “So, you wanna keep bein’ towed around with your mom, livin’ in a gross town like Danvers?”“Is there a choice?”“Yeah, there sure is. You can run away and try to be a whole person before it’s too late, or you can live with mommy dearest forever and turn into Norman Bates.
Rebecca McNutt
Friendship is a strange idea, difficult to quantify and, at times, even more difficult to maintain. Clearly a friend is someone you enjoy spending time with. However, a friend is also someone you continue to support even during periods when they are considerably less pleasurable to be around. The loyalty of friendship often contains a kind of tautology or feedback loop: the longer you are friends the more loyal you become, and the more loyal you become the longer you remain friends.
Jacob Wren