Mavis Gallant Quotes

A writer's life stands in relation to his work as a house does to a garden, related but distinct.

I am not interested in theories, she had taught herself to say, for fear of being invaded by something other than a dream.
But she was not certain what she meant and not sure that it was true.

Like every other form of art, literature is no more and nothing less than a matter of life and death. The only question worth asking about a story - or a poem, or a piece of sculpture, or a new concert hall - is, Is it dead or alive?

A short story is what you see when you look out of the window.

Appeals to memory were never perfectly answered.

Converts have it soft," said Mary. "They come to it late, without ever having had the Devil under the bed. They sail in and admire the stained-glass windows. All the dirty work has been done.

The older I get the more grateful I am not to be told how everything comes out.

All lives are interesting; no one life is more interesting than another. Its fascination depends on how much is revealed, and in what manner.

I began to ration my writing, for fear I would dream through life as my father had done. I was afraid I had inherited a poisoned gene from him, a vocation without a gift.

Presently Arnaud folded the paper napkin, in the same careful way he always folded a table napkin, and said I ought to follow Chantal's suggestion and get a job in teaching a nursery school. (So Maman had mentioned that to Mme. Pons, too) I should teach until I had enough working time behind me to claim a pension. It would be good for me in my old age to have an income of my own. Anything could happen. He could be killed in a train crash or called up for a war. My father could easily be ruined in a lawsuit and die covered with debts. There were advantages to teaching, such as long holidays and reduced train fares.
"How long would it take?" I said. "Before I could stop teaching and get my pension."
"Thirty-five years," said Arnaud. "I'll ask my mother. She had no training, either, but she taught private classes. All you need is a decent background and some recommendations.

My mother has lived every day of her life as if it were preparation for some kind of crisis.

The late Mavis Gallant told the Paris Review that writing is like "a love affair: the beginning is the best part. I write every day. It is not a burden. It is the way I live.

[My father] had spent his own short time like a priest in charge of a relic, forever expecting the blessed blood to liquefy.

I wanted to live in Paris and write nothing but fiction and be perfectly free. I had decided all this had to be settled by the time I was thirty, and so I gave up my job and moved to Paris at twenty-eight. I just held my breath and jumped. I didn't even look to see if there was water in the pool.

It happened that at the late age of twenty-seven I had run away from home. High time, you might say; but rebels can't always be choosers.

A woman can always get some practical use from a torn-up life ... She likes mending and patching it, making sure the edges are straight. She spreads the last shred out and takes its measure: 'What can I do with this remnant? How long does it need to last?
A man puts on his life ready-made. If it doesn't fit, he will try to exchange it for another. Only a fool of a man will try to adjust the sleeves or move the buttons; he doesn't know how.

Like his father, like Jules Renard, he had been carried along the slow, steady swindle of history and experience.

No one is as real to me as people in the novel. It grows like a living thing. When I realize they do not exist except in my mind I have a feeling of sadness, looking around for them, as if the half-empty cafe were a place I had once come to with friends who had all moved away.

Marie, now Mme. Driscoll, turned to Berthe and smiled, as she used to when they were children. Once again, the smile said, Have I done the right thing? Is this what you wanted? Yes, yes, said Berthe silently, but she went on crying.

Decide what the rest of your life is to be. Whatever you are now, you might be forever.

Writing is like a love affair: the beginning is the best part.

She and Marie were Montreal girls, not trained to accompany heroes, or to hold out for dreams, but just to be patient.