Canadian Literature Quotes

I was editing Canadian Literature. I didn't want to let Canadian Literature go, so they reached a nice compromise by which I received half a professor's salary. ~ George Woodcock

She hated him, this man, and these men: the ones who picked her up without expression and used her without emotion. The ones who picked her up with no more regard than they had for picking lint off the collars of their well-pressed suits. She preferred the sweaty nervousness of young virgins or the eager speediness of excited old vets with their knobby fingers and waxy breath to these cold, hard men. These were the ones who called her squaw. Who called her half-breed, the ones who would just as soon slap her than bother to put on the condom she always handed them. She often wondered why they didn't just keep the $80 it cost to be with her and drive their comfortable, bucket-seated SUVs home to the suburbs. They could kiss their wives hello and then slip into very hot showers to jerk off for free. Their peckish wives could spend the money they saved spending an afternoon getting the silk wraps and pedicures that would goad them into putting out anyways. To these men she had no name and no face. She was a hole. Consequently, she held no regard for these bastards. She gave them the calculated respect accorded to dangerous dogs. ~ Cherie Dimaline

We build this country ourselves every day and we have to be, in the most positive sense, totally unreal. ~ J.C. Villamere

She comes to naught, my dear one, she comes to naught, all that there business. What the hell, maybe twice in your life you have yourself a whore of a good time, and then you spend every night of the rest of your life trying to get that good time back. But she comes to naught. ~ Lynn Coady

A rural Venus, Selah rises from the
gold foliage of the Sixhiboux River, sweeps
petals of water from her skin. At once,
clouds begin to sob for such beauty.
Clothing drops like leaves.
"No one makes poetry,my Mme.
Butterfly, my Carmen, in Whylah,"
I whisper. She smiles: "We'll shape it with
our souls."
Desire illuminates the dark manuscript
of our skin with beetles and butterflies.
After the lightning and rain has ceased,
after the lightning and rain of lovemaking
has ceased, Selah will dive again into the
sunflower-open river. ~ George Elliott Clarke

But maybe when you never say a thing, your thoughts spread like mould. ~ Tamara Faith Berger

My first jailbreak began when a coarse-toothed mechanic's file crashed through the window of the Deeper Harbour Police
Station at two in the morning. The file bounced three or four times before clattering to a halt among a scatter of shattered glass. The file spun a little and came to rest, like a compass needle pointing somewhere far off the edge of the map. Looking back from right here and right now I believe I would like to start this story right then - three days after I had just turned fourteen - spending my birthday in jail. - SINKING DEEPER ~ Steve Vernon

If I had had a daughter, I always knew what I would tell her. First of all, I would try to counter all outdated stereotypical claptrap that girls are commonly told about their sex--that women are valued far more for their sexual characteristics than their character and brains--and encourage her to be a truly independent person. Only knowing who she is herself will she be able to find find her own life's work and make good decisions in choosing a partner and having children. ~ Doris Anderson

What a land. What power these rivers were already yielding, far beyond her sight. Even a map of this country
lines arranged in an arbitrary way on a long rectangular piece of paper
stirs the imagination beyond imagination, she thought, looking at the map, as other lines differently arranged in relation to each other have not the power to stir. Each name on the map says We reached this point, by broken trail and mountains and water; and when we reached it, thus and thus we named it. ~ Ethel Wilson

All the things she couldn't say, the things no one wanted to hear. ~ Spencer Gordon

The moon twangs its silver strings;
The river swoons into town;
The wind beds down in the pines,
Covers itself with stars. ~ George Elliott Clarke

The traveler from Europe edges into it like a tiny Jonah entering an inconceivably large whale, slipping past the straits of Belle Isle into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where five Canadian provinces surround him, for the most part invisible. Then he goes up the St. Lawrence and the inhabited country comes into view, mainly a French-speaking country with its own cultural traditions. To enter the United States is a matter of crossing an ocean; to enter Canada is a matter of being silently swallowed by an alien continent. ~ Northrop Frye

Our desire to say more grows bigger and what to say about it, except that saying is not always about saying, growing is not always about growing. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

There is nothing like literature: I lose a cow, I write about her death, and my writing pays me enough to buy another cow. ~ Jules Renard

Scar tissue does more than flaunt its strength by chronicling the assaults it has withstood. Scar tissue is new growth. And it is tougher than skin innocent of the blade. ~ Shelley Jackson

There is something magical to me about literature and fiction and I think it can do things not only that pop culture cannot do but that are urgent now: one is that by creating a character in a work of fiction you can allow a reader to leap over the wall of self and to allow him to imagine himself not only somewhere else but someone else in a way that television and movies, in a way that no other form can do. I think people are essentially lonely and alone and frightened of being alone. ~ David Foster Wallace

The attitude that poetry should not be analyzed is prevalent among many who consider themselves experts on children's literature. But I suspected that kids like to look closely at things and figure out what makes them go. ~ X.J. Kennedy

Well, there's just some universal truths in a way that I've just observed to be true. You read Voltaire. You read modern literature. Anywhere you go, there's these observations about romantic love and what it does people, and these rotten feelings that rarely are people meaning to do that to each other. ~ Feist

We write to strengthen our soul and the spirit of other souls. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

As always when men have too much to say to one another, they found no words. But the inexpressible thing that was taking place outside was uttered in Krämer's rough heartiness and Runki's clumsy tenderness, and the noise and the shots around the camp gave it its meaning.
Krämer closed his eyes. ~ Bruno Apitz

In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry. ~ Norman MacCaig

I hope to be remembered for writing books about social justice that also have enough aesthetic value to endure as works of literature. ~ Jonathan Kozol

Suddenly, literature, politics, and analysis came together, and I began to think more inclusively about the emotional imprisonment of mind and spirit to which all human beings are heir. In the course of analytic time, it became apparent that -- with or without the burden of social justice -- the effort required to attain any semblance of inner freedom was extraordinary.

Great literature, I then realized, is a record not of the achievement, but of the effort. ~ Vivian Gornick

What had brought me to New York in the autumn of 1972 was a letter of recommendation written by Norman Mailer, the author of 'The Naked and the Dead' and American literature's leading heavyweight contender, to Dan Wolf, the delphic editor of 'The Village Voice.' ~ James Wolcott

George W. Bush is the worst President
in all of American history. ~ Helen Thomas

The English sent all their bores abroad, and acquired the Empire as a punishment. ~ Edward Bond

Reading literature and engaging in writing breaks through the mental rigidity that experience and repetition breeds. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil. ~ H.L. Mencken

When you watch Canadian kids [Box Lacrosse Players] score, when you see their skill level around the cage, you wonder to yourself, 'Jeez, are we teaching kids [in the U.S.] the wrong things? ~ Dom Starsia

They needed a reason why a little kid would commit murder, someone or something to point the finger at, and I think they were relieved when they hit upon horror movies as the culprit. But there's no reason a child commits murder, just as there's no reason a child gets lost. What would it be - because his parents weren't watching him? That's not a reason, it's just a step in the process. ~ Ryu Murakami

Literature remains an indispensable human activity, in which the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has no duty to the masses or society, and ethical or moral pronouncements added by busybody critics are of no concern to the writer. ~ Gao Xingjian

Are we to deny our daughters the works of Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck or Shakespeare?....Where is the equality in banning girls from enjoying wonderful works of literature?....What kind of society defines suitable reading material by sex? This is indefensible censorship encouraging ignorance and bias. [About Caitlin Moran's statement.] ~ Diane Davies

I've decided to cut out the part of the speech where I say anything nice about Democrats. ~ Ann Coulter

In 1857, Bizet departed for Rome and spent three years there. He studied the landscape, the culture, Italian literature and art. Musically he studied the scores of the great masters. At the end of the first year he was asked to submit a religious work as his required composition. As a self-described atheist, Bizet felt uneasy and hypocritical writing a religious piece. Instead, he submitted a comic opera. Publicly, the committee accepted, acknowledging his musical talent. Privately, the committee conveyed their displeasure. Thus, early in his career, Bizet displayed an independent spirit that would be reflected in innovative ideas in his opera composition.
[The Pearl Fishers - Georges Bizet, Virginia Opera] ~ Georges Bizet

Faced with the numbering logic of neoliberal regimes, literature offers an intervention in order to consider identity and voice, to consider representation in both the political and artistic sense of the term... [Literature and art] cultivate tension between an unresolved past and present, between invisibility and exposure, showing the dualities of face and mask that leave their trace on identitarian struggles today. ~ Francine Masiello

The Anglican service today was more familiar to me from movies. Like one of the great Shakespeare speeches, the graveside oration, studded in fragments in the memory, was a succession of brilliant phrases, book titles, dying cadences that breathed life, pure alertness, along the spine. ~ Ian McEwan

But Max said: "Last summer I spent working these peace booths at state fairs. We'd go around in this bigole pickup with this knocked-down booth in the back and boxes of literature. People'd come up to me and hear me talking about colonialism or the bomb or who was responsible for the Cold War, and they'd start railing on Communists. Communists, these damn Communists. And I'd say hey, hold on now, you're talkin' about my mother. They'd look at me like I'd turned into a Russky before their very eyes. It certainly shut 'em up." He smiled to remember, delighted. "They were good people. Country people. Didn't want to say anything bad about a fellow's mom." Saul ~ John Crowley

The idea of some kind of objectively constant, universal literary value is seductive. It feels real. It feels like a stone cold fact that In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, is better than A Shore Thing, by Snooki. And it may be; Snooki definitely has more one-star reviews on Amazon. But if literary value is real, no one seems to be able to locate it or define it very well. We're increasingly adrift in a grey void of aesthetic relativism. ~ Lev Grossman

Do what you love, love what you do ~ Benazio Putra

Paugh!" the troll scoffed. "Romance. Kissing and folly. Where's the story, where's the philosophy? I'm a troll, and even I can't rip a bodice. You should read real literature. The classics." He held up a book called Ye Olde Clubbe of Fisticuffs. "This is one of my favorites. It's all about, like, rejecting capitalism." He held up another, the spine as yet uncracked, called Alliance of Nincompoops. "Or this one, about a misunderstood genius. You should read it. I'd love to chat about what the true meaning of success is when we're living in a world that values looks instead of substance. ~ Delilah S. Dawson

Odo in fact owed his first acquaintance with the French writers to Alfieri, who, in the intervals of his wandering over Europe, now and then reappeared in Turin laden with the latest novelties in Transalpine literature and haberdashery. What his eccentric friend failed to provide, Odo had little difficulty in obtaining for himself; for though most of the new writers were on the Index, and the Sardinian censorship was notoriously severe, there was never yet a barrier that could keep out books, and Cantapresto was a skilled purveyor of contraband dainties. Odo had thus acquainted himself with the lighter literature of England and France; and though he had read but few philosophical treatises, was yet dimly aware of the new standpoint from which, north of the Alps, men were beginning to test the accepted forms of thought. The ~ Edith Wharton

When you visit your analyst does he ask you what you read when using the stool? He should, you know. To an analyst it should make a great difference whether you read one kind of literature in the toilet and another elsewhere. It should even make a difference to him whether you read or do not read - in the toilet. Such matters are unfortunately not widely enough discussed. It is assumed that what one does in the toilet is one's own private affair. It is not. The whole universe is concerned. ~ Henry Miller

I was a screen
I was their protector. The more I saw, the less they would. ~ Henry James

If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Oh literature, oh the glorious Art, how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us, and chucks us aside. Alas! ~ D.H. Lawrence

We ought to thank God for that. Yes, the man who tills the land is more worthy of respect than any. ~ Nikolai Gogol

I want to tell you something but good taste
Restrains me ~ Sappho Van Lesbos

Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers. ~ Lord Byron

If I could have gone on describing to you the beauties of this region, who knows but I might have made a fine addition to the literature of our age? ~ Robert Gould Shaw

Literature is the best thing humanity has. Poetry is the heart of literature, the highest concentration of everything that is the best in the world and in man. It is the only true food for your soul ~ Lyudmila Ulitskaya

In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism. ~ Herbert Croly

It's best to be alone when you are sad. I wanted to be myself and feel my strength slowly seeping back into me. ~ Benyamin