This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love.

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

Canadians and Americans may look alike, but the contents of their heads are quite different. Americans experience themselves, individually, as small toads in the biggest and most powerful puddle in the world. Their sense of power comes from identifying with the puddle. Canadians as individuals may have more power within the puddle, since there are fewer toads in it; it's the puddle that's seen as powerless.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

I'm not sure I really am a Humanist. I describe myself as a rigorous agnostic, which means that you cannot declare as a matter of material truth something that is in fact a matter of spiritual belief.

Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hard-shelled, firmly closed.