You see, when you're middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied.

My writing process is ritualized and monotonous, but there's no other way to get the job done. All other fiction writers I've met say the same thing.

In Canada, when we speak of water, we're speaking of ourselves. Canadians are known to be unextravagant, and one explanation of this might be that we know that wasted water means a diminished collective soul; polluted waters mean a sickened soul. Water is the basis of our self-identity, and when we dream of canoes and thunderstorms and streams and even snowballs, we're dreaming about our innermost selves.

I think, there are people for whom freedom is a bigger, more important thing than stability.

We barely have enough time to figure out who we are and then we become bitter and isolated as we age.

As the expression goes, we spend our youth attaining wealth, and our wealth attaining youth.

A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age - regardless of how they look on the outside - pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.