“If we try to envisage an 'average Canadian writer' we can see him living near a campus teaching at least part-time at university level mingling too much for his work's good with academics doing as much writing as he can for the CBC and always hoping for a Canada Council Fellowship.”

“I was allowed to wander where I could. Here is a case in which you search for your independence and allow something creative to come out of that.”

“If we try to envisage an 'average Canadian writer' we can see him living near a campus teaching at least part-time at university level mingling too much for his work's good with academics doing as much writing as he can for the CBC and always hoping for a Canada Council Fellowship.”

“If we can find out why the idea rather than the nation of Canada can win a growing loyalty rather than commanding it then it seems to me we shall have come very near to trapping the elusive creature the Canadian Identity.”

“It is not in life but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.”

“Pioneers did not produce original works of art because they were creating original human environments they did not imagine Utopias because they were shaping them.”