Quotes from Miriam Toews

drafty homes but at least we have rage and we will build empires with that, gentlemen.

But what is the bedrock of civilized society? Libraries, said Elf.

And we hug and I begin to tell her that I love her before words become impossible and we simply breathe together in each other's arms for a minute, before I go. Before I have to be elsewhere.

During that time, The Mouth came by to pray with us, and my dad began to spend his evenings sitting in the yellow lawn chair and staring at the highway, or down in the basement with his isotope material, finding comfort in the stability that's created from decay.

you better write me letters. I said yeah, I will, but they'll be boring. Nothing happens in my life. Nothing has to happen, she said, for it to be life. Well, I said, I'll try. No, Yoli, said Elf, better than that. She yanked on my arms. Please. You have to. I'm counting on you.

He would be admitting to himself that life has suddenly become very short, very precious, that soon he'll no longer exist, that it'll be over. Of course he knew that, we know that, we say it, but to really, really know it, to be certain of it, is more than he can be right now. His bed is safe. Sleep is easy. He's not a stupid man.

Summer Feelin'!" said Summer Feelin'. "That's right," said Uncle Jack, "and some aren't.

and I finally understand what she needs to hear and that she's talking about not just me but Elf too and I tell her that my sorrow was not created by her, that my childhood was a joyful thing, an island in the sun, that her mothering is impeccable, that she is not to blame.

Imagine the least well-adjusted kid in your school starting a breakaway clique of people whose manifesto includes a ban on the media, dancing, smoking, temperate climates, movies, drinking rock 'n' roll, having sex for fun, swimming, make-up, jewellery, playing pool, going to cities, or staying up past nine o'clock. That was Menno all over. Thanks a lot, Menno.

The day before the day before my father killed himself he took my hand in his and said Yoli, it feels to me as though the lights are going out. We were sitting by a fountain in a park at soon.

Listen, I said, I don't think you understand. I don't want to be presumptuous, but really how could you understand what another person's suicide means? My friend asked the waitress for more coffee. I said that actually, now, I'd begun to measure a person's character and integrity by their ability to kill themselves.

I want her face to feel at home on an ancient coin, he said. I want her eyes to harm me.

I've hired someone to attach a bedroom to the back of the house, one that is large and bright and warm and that will one day have a beautiful view onto a flower-strewn yard topped with blue skies and soaring hopes and dreams. For my mother.

That's me! Elf had said. I reminded her that she had her sight, she could see, she'd always been able to see but she told me she'd never adjusted to the light, she'd just never developed a tolerance for the world, her inoculation hadn't taken. Reality was a rusty leg trap.

Living with my mother is like living with Winnie the Pooh. She has many adventures, getting herself into and out of trouble guilelessly, and all of these adventures are accompanied by a few lines of gentle philosophy. There's always a little bit more to learn every time you get your head stuck in a honey pot if you're my mother.

I don't know why saying bowel movement and stool is better than vag and piehole. It doesn't matter what words you use in life, it's not gonna prevent you from suffering.

I thought to myself that there really were so many simple ways we could make ourselves look less like idiots.

You better write me letters. I said yeah, I will, but they'll be boring. Nothing happens in my life. Nothing has to happen, she said, for it to be life. Well, I said, I'll try".

What had she said about libraries and civilization? Because you make a promise, she'd said. You promise to return the book. You promise to come back.

I think she was smiling the same kind of real smile that Tash had smiled just before she left. It's a scary smile. It's a smile that means there is nothing left to lose. That you are free

I believe in what the great poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge thought were the cardinal rules of early education: 1. To work by love and so generate love 2. To habituate the mind to intellectual accuracy and truth 3. To excite imaginative power In his lecture on education, Coleridge concluded with the words 'Little is taught by contest or dispute, everything by sympathy and love.

Naturally there's a fucking conchigliette in my shoe!

When Richard Bach wrote If you love someone, set them free he can't have been directing his advice at human beings.

The city was spread out in the soft darkness, calm after the big thunder and hail storm, still moist and warm like a woman very satisfied in love.