C
CelticWarlord
Guest
Carol Ann Shields , (1935 – 2003) was an American-born Canadian novelist and short story writer. She is best known for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries , which won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General’s Award in Canada.
“Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.”
“This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.”
“In one day I had altered my life; my life, therefore, was alterable. This simple axiom did not call out for exegesis; no, it entered my bloodstream directly, as powerful as heroin. I could feel it pump and surge, the way it brightened my veins to a kind of glass. I had wakened that morning to narrowness and predestination and now I was falling asleep in the storm of my own free will.”
“Whenever I meet anyone new, I don’t say, “Tell me about your belief system.” I say, “Tell me about your average day”.”
“It’s the arrangement of events which makes the stories. It’s throwing away, compressing, underlining. Hindsight can give structure to anything, but you have to be able to see it. Breathing, waking and sleeping: our lives are steamed and shaped into stories. Knowing that is what keeps me from going insane, and though I don’t like to admit it, sometimes it’s the only thing.”
“When we think of the past we tend to assume that people were simpler in their functions, and shaped by forces that were primary and irreducible. We take for granted that our forbears were imbued with a deeper purity of purpose than we possess nowadays, and a more singular set of mind, believing, for example, that early scientists pursued their ends with unbroken dedication and that artists worked in the flame of some perpetual inspiration. But none of this is true. Those who went before us were every bit as wayward and unaccountable and unsteady in their longings as people are today. The least breeze, whether it be sexual or psychological – or even a real breeze, carrying with it the refreshment of oxygen and energy – has the power to turn us from our path.”
“I’ve had lots of happy moments. I’ve been lucky. But I always think the happiest moment hasn’t happened yet. I’m talking about the queen of happy moments. The biggie. The unfathomable. The epitome of happiness. The only thing is, I worry that when it comes along I won’t recognize it. It’ll be flashing away there at the edge of my vision and I’ll be looking so hard that I’ll just let it float right by.”
Code:
- - - - - - -“This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.”
“In one day I had altered my life; my life, therefore, was alterable. This simple axiom did not call out for exegesis; no, it entered my bloodstream directly, as powerful as heroin. I could feel it pump and surge, the way it brightened my veins to a kind of glass. I had wakened that morning to narrowness and predestination and now I was falling asleep in the storm of my own free will.”
“Whenever I meet anyone new, I don’t say, “Tell me about your belief system.” I say, “Tell me about your average day”.”
“It’s the arrangement of events which makes the stories. It’s throwing away, compressing, underlining. Hindsight can give structure to anything, but you have to be able to see it. Breathing, waking and sleeping: our lives are steamed and shaped into stories. Knowing that is what keeps me from going insane, and though I don’t like to admit it, sometimes it’s the only thing.”
“When we think of the past we tend to assume that people were simpler in their functions, and shaped by forces that were primary and irreducible. We take for granted that our forbears were imbued with a deeper purity of purpose than we possess nowadays, and a more singular set of mind, believing, for example, that early scientists pursued their ends with unbroken dedication and that artists worked in the flame of some perpetual inspiration. But none of this is true. Those who went before us were every bit as wayward and unaccountable and unsteady in their longings as people are today. The least breeze, whether it be sexual or psychological – or even a real breeze, carrying with it the refreshment of oxygen and energy – has the power to turn us from our path.”
“I’ve had lots of happy moments. I’ve been lucky. But I always think the happiest moment hasn’t happened yet. I’m talking about the queen of happy moments. The biggie. The unfathomable. The epitome of happiness. The only thing is, I worry that when it comes along I won’t recognize it. It’ll be flashing away there at the edge of my vision and I’ll be looking so hard that I’ll just let it float right by.”