I read a piece by a guy out in Alberta that said Canadians are lazy because they're not patenting enough new inventions. I disagree. Canadians invent a lot of stuff. Actually patenting them is expensive.

Love was like a steamroller. There was no avoiding it; it went over you and you came out flat.

The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

We do not know how we'd behave. But a lot of people facing fascism didn't become fascists. I don't happen to believe that we are all monsters.

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. Think of it as the altar of the Muse Oblivion, to whom you sacrifice your botched first drafts, the tokens of your human imperfection.

I'm from the generation that had the boys' door and the girls' door when you went to school, and you got in big trouble if you went in the wrong one.

In the evenings there's been thunder, a distant bumping and stumbling, like God on a sullen binge.