“He keeps his voice kindly but remote. A cross between a pedagogue, soothsayer, and a benevolent uncle – that should be his tone.”

“Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.”

“Every Canadian has a complicated relationship with the United States, whereas Americans think of Canada as the place where the weather comes from.”

“Lambhood and tigerishness may be found in either gender, and in the same individual at different times.”

“What thumbsuckers we all are...when it comes to mothers.”

“We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive; love or grief or despair or hatred is what drives us on. We'll spy relentlessly on the dead; we'll open their letters, we'll read their journals, we'll go through their trash, hoping for a hint, a final word, an explanation, from those who have deserted us--who've left us holding the bag, which is often a good deal emptier than we'd supposed.”

“Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.”

“He wants to see, he wants to know, only to see and know. I'm aware that it is this mentality, this curiosity, which is responsible for the hydrogen bomb and the imminent demise of civilization and that we would all be better off if we were still at the stone-worshipping stage. Though surely it is not this affable inquisitiveness that should be blamed.”

“Girl Without HandsWalking through the ruinson your way to workthat do not look like ruinswith the sunlight pouring overthe seen worldlike hail or meltedsilver, that brightand magnificent, each leafand stone quickened and specific in it,and you can't hold it,you can't hold any of it. Distance surrounds you,marked out by the ends of your armswhen they are stretched to their fullest.You can go no farther than this,you think, walking forward,pushing the distance in front of youlike a metal cart on wheelswith its barriers and horizontals.Appearance melts away from you,the offices and pyramidson the horizon shimmer and cease.No one can enter that circleyou have made, that clean circleof dead space you have madeand stay inside,mourning because it is clean.Then there's the girl, in the white dress,meaning purity, or the failureto be any colour. She has no hands, it's true.The scream that happened to the airwhen they were taken offsurrounds her now like an aureoleof hot sand, of no sound.Everything has bled out of her.Only a girl like thiscan know what's happened to you.If she were here she wouldreach out her arms towardsyou now, and touch youwith her absent handsand you would feel nothing, but you would betouched all the same.”

“I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.”

“If social stability goes pear-shaped, you have a choice between anarchy and dictatorship. Most people will opt for more security, even if they have to give up some personal freedom.”