It is a vast country, so that inspires you. It's also the greatest hotel on earth: It welcomes people from everywhere. It's a good country to write from because in many ways Canada is the world.

Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.

A movie tends to box you in, at least as far as the aesthetics. You have an incredibly kinetic experience, which is the joy of cinema.

Words are much better at relating emotions and thoughts.

If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.

Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team.