I beliebe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.

To want is to have a weakness.

Sanity is a valuable possesion; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.

But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell burst, the plummet of the car from a bridge.

He is talking to people in Toronto, trying to find out if I am guilty; but he won’t find it out that way. He doesn’t understand yet that guilt comes to you not from the things you’ve done, but from the things that other have done for you.

But the body had its own cultural forms. It had its own art. Executions wereits tragedies, pornography was its romance.

It’s simple,’ Kat told them. ‘You bombard them with images of what they ought to be, and you make them feel grotty for being the way they are. You’re working with the gap between reality and perception. That’s why you have to hit them with something new, something they’ve never seen before, something they aren’t....

Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a grey moth and let go.You could not believe I was more than your echo.

Point being that you don’t have to get too worked up about us, dear educated minds. You don’t have to think of us as real girls, real flesh and blood, real pain, real injustice. That might be too upsetting. Just discard the sordid part. Consider us pure symbol. We’re no more real than money.

But there’s something missing in them, even the nice ones. It’s like they’re permanently absent-minded, like that can’t quite remember who they are.

Who is to say that prayers have any effect? On the other hand, who is to say they don’t? I picture the gods, diddling around on Olympus, wallowing in the nectar and ambrosia and the aroma of burning bones and fat, mischievous as a pack of ten-year-olds with a sick cat to play with and...

The Dead Hand, yeah, it was, like, seminal, but tame by today’s standards. Violet, for instance, did not get her intestines ripped out. There wasn’t any torture, nobody’s liver got fried in a pan, there wasn’t any gang rape. So what’s the fun of that?

There were a few other moves of his father’s he could do without as well – the sucker punches, the ruffling of the hair, the way of pronouncing the word son, in a slightly deeper voice. This hearty way of talking was getting worse, as if his father were auditioning for the role of Dad,...

Why is it always such a surprise? thinks Toby. The moon. Even though we know it’s coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush.

Some people write letters, in the library.

[Northrop] Frye was concerned mostly with literary criticism, and myths interested him as structural elements in works of literature. He used the word myth to mean story, without attaching any connotation of truth or falsehood to it; but a myth is a story of a certain kind. The myths of a culture are those stories...

. . . time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee. . . . I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

War is what happens when language fails

Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

The story as told in The Odyssey doesn’t hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.

There’s a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That’s what writers do when they’re good.

If one of the arguments against eating meat is to do with cruelty and animal intelligence, then lab meat avoids that. There’s also the environmental argument for it.

She looks like a very young old person, or a very old young person; but then, she’s looked that way ever since she was two.

I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more.

This murdered girl troubles me. After the first shock, nobody at school says much about her. Even Cordelia does not want to talk about her. It’s as if this girl has done something shameful, herself, by being murdered.

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Like many modern poets, I tend to conceal rhymes by placing them in the middle of lines, and to avoid immediate alliteration and assonance in favor of echoes placed later in the poems.

I don’t think of poetry as a ‘rational’ activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me.

I don’t think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It’s essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.

The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love.

Time: old cold time, old sorrow, settling down in layers like silt in a pond.

Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave -The water below is as dark as the grave,And maybe you’ll sink in your little blue boat -It’s hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat

Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line...

The male frog, in mating season,” said Crake, “makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogs – it’s been documented – discover that if they position themselves in empty...

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away...

I’m curious. If someone says ‘Don’t open that door’, I’m right there!

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.

Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?

Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera – or an NHL game.

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television – there wasn’t a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

Debt is part of the human condition. Civilization is based on exchanges – on gifts, trades, loans – and the revenges and insults that come when they are not paid back.

There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.

Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters.

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

Now we come to forgiveness. Don’t worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Don’t let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that....

I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her outcome, the result of the life she once lived headlong; whereas she, if she can be said to exist at all, is composed only of what I remember. I have the better view – I can see her...

I didn’t much like it, this grudge-holding against the past.

People change, though, especially after they are dead.