A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual.

That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.

I mean, there's little enough in this life, really, and you only find it worth living for the odd moments, and if you think you're going to have those odd moments again, then it makes life wonderful and have a meaning.

Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.

John Kenneth Galbraith and Marshall McLuhan are the two greatest modern Canadians that the U.S. has produced.

Blessed tree and blessed birds, that were to be neither saved nor damned.

But don't think that it's a system or a culture or a state or a person that does the letting down. It's our expectations that let us down. It begins in the warmth of the womb and the discovery that it's cold outside. But it's not the cold's fault that it's cold.