Mordecai Richler

“We live in the country, and I have a huge library there. When we go to London for the winter I never know which books to take. I never know what I am going to need. That's the only disadvantage.”

“If Canada had a soul (a doubtful proposition, Moses thought) then it wasn't to be found in Batoche or the Plains of Abraham or Fort Walsh or Charlottetown or Parliament Hill, but in The Caboose and thousands of bars like it that knit the country together from Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, to the far side of Vancouver Island.”

“מה שצריך לצפות מרומן הוא שיהיה כמו חלון שאף אחד עדיין לא הסתכל ממנו החוצה.”

“יש עשרה דיברות, הלא כך? ובכן זה כמו במבחן, אם אתה מקבל שמונה מתוך עשר, אתה בין הטובים בכיתה.”

“קנדה היא אחד המקומות הבודדים שנותרו בהם שומרים על נורמות של כבוד לאחר.”

“יש שלושה צדדים בכל ויכוח: הצד שלך, הצד של עמיתך והאמת.”

“אני כותב כל יום, או לפחות נכנס לחדר העבודה.”

“כל אדם יוצר את האלוהים בדמותו.”

“Let me put it this way. Canada is not so much a country as a holding tank filled with the disgruntled progeny of defeated peoples.”

“Some of the attitudes of Barney are certainly attitudes I share, but not all.”

“Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates.”

“In Canada, nobody is ever overthrown because nobody gives a damn.”

“Without a doubt, it [Canada] is the land God gave to Cain.”

“I'm criticized by the feminists, by the Jewish establishment, by Canadian nationalists. And why not? I've had my pot shots at them. I'm fair game.”

“The process hasn't changed, but the writer has developed. I still get up every morning and go to work.”

“Cripples are not the stuff of romance. Only Lord Byron, dragging his club foot, springs to mind as an exception to the rule, but such a failing in a man is regarded as interesting, even provocative, rather than disfiguring. Women must submit to a more exacting measure.”

“Everybody writes a book too many.”

“But the truth is, nothing delights me more than a biography of one of the truly great that proves he or she was an absolute shit.”

“I don't hold with shamans, witch doctors, or psychiatrists. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or even Dickens, understood more about the human condition than ever occurred to any of you. You overrated bunch of charlatans deal with the grammar of human problems, and the writers I've mentioned with the essence.”

“In a nutshell, I am not unaware of my failings. Neither am I a stranger to irony.”