Even an obvious fabrication is some comfort when you have few others.

Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It's all the same impulse. What do we hope from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we can get? At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.

Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.

The characters [of The Tempest] have always been favorites of mine. It is one of his meditations on art - what it does.

Extreme good, extreme evil: the abilities required are similar.

I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.

The desire to be loved is the last illusion. Give it up and you will be free.