Carol Shields

“There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.”

“Beauty takes courage. Courage itself takes courage.”

“Practically all girls are capable of pulling off theLady Love stunt before marriage but alas, only toomany of them think a wedding ring gives them theright to flop down on the do-nothing stool, get fatand eat onions... When a man see his beauteous pride slouching around the house in a soiled house-coat with cold cream on her face, he feels he gotcheated at the altar.Too often after the first baby, [women] ceasebeing wives and are only mothers... giving all theirtenderness to Junior and letting poor husband goheart-hungry.”

“Dorrie gave Larry's hand an excited, distracted squeeze that said: almost home. They were about to be matter-of-factly claimed by familiar streets and houses and the life they'd chosen or which had chosen them.”

“Why should men be allowed to strut under the privilege of their life adventures, wearing them like a breast full of medals, while women went all gray and silent beneath the weight of theirs?”

“I'm concerned about the unknowability of other people.”

“Women were supposed to be strong, but they weren't really, they weren't allowed to be.”

“Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life.”

“Have you ever looked at, say, a picture or a great building or read a paragraph in a book and felt the world suddenly expand and, in the same instant, contract and harden into a kernel of perfect purity? Do you know what I mean? Everything suddenly fits, everything's in its place.”

“These hips are mighty hips.These hips are magic hips.I have known themto put a spell on a manand spin him like a top”

“Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.”

“Here's to another year and let's hope it's above ground.”

“From surfeit to loss is a short line.”

“How does a poet know when a poem is ended? Because it lies flat, taut; nothing can be added or subtracted. How does a woman know when a marriage is over? Because of the way her life suddenly shears off in just two directions: past and future.”

“I don't think I would have been a writer if I hadn't been a mother. I wanted to construct something that contained some of these feelings that I had, some of these discoveries or revelations.”

“It has never been easy for me to understand the obliteration of time, to accept, as others seem to do, the swelling and corresponding shrinkage of seasons or the conscious acceptance that one year has ended and another begun. There is something here that speaks of our essential helplessness and how the greater substance of our lives is bound up with waste and opacity... How can so much time hold so little, how can it be taken from us? Months, weeks, days, hours misplaced – and the most precious time of life, too, when our bodies are at their greatest strength, and open, as they never will be again, to the onslaught of sensation.”

“Words are our life. We are human because we use language. So I think we are less human when we use less language.”