Quotes from Russell Smith

Yes, the hunky barista looks even more terrifically masculine with three days' growth on his chin. Guys under 50 mostly do. But when your beard is partly or largely grey, that stubble can just look a little unwashed. Sadly, when you're over 50, different rules apply.

Everyone likes to hear that their eccentricities and their addictions are simply evidence of their sensitive artistic nature.

We are still vulnerable to gender-targeted marketing no matter how carefully we edit our children's bookshelves.

No matter how fine your suit and your shoes, you will remind everyone that you are not yet a grownup man by wearing them with your old college knapsack, in its nasty, nylon glory.

There is something insouciant and boyish about the sockless ankle in summer.

A song is a short composition for voice and instruments. It is a piece of sung poetry set to music. It is usually only a few minutes long.

Most men are petrified of standing out in any way or being thought superficial.

Verisimilitude is something I am constantly seeking in fiction. I am looking for surface detail that makes something seem real.

No surprise here: Pop music is by far the most conservative art form there is.

Songs are great. I love songs. I sing them in the shower sometimes. They can be poignant or cheery or angry, and they can have catchy and satisfying melodies. There's nothing wrong with songs.

I went to Queen's - a fine university with the proudly stupidest frosh week in the country. This was, when I was there, supposed to be somehow evidence of a higher social class.

If you tell your husband or boyfriend for his whole life that he needn't worry about his clothes, that he couldn't possibly understand them, that they are a woman's affair, then you can hardly complain that he doesn't have any style sense. You all make this bed.

Canadian writers don't live in gated mansions; you can just talk to them when you see them lining up at the Second Cup.

Periods of nostalgia are impossible to predict or explain.

If you define eccentricity as creativity, then yes, creativity is eccentricity.

Wear your clothes with abandon, I say; don't keep them pristine as if for museums: They are meant to wear out. Then you get to buy new ones.

I am indeed completely nuts, but that doesn't mean I don't care about how I look. Sometimes, I admit, I will privilege appearance over comfort.

I don't see my artist friends as any more neurotic or addiction-prone than the others. The roommates I have had who were into triathlons or environmentalism were just as crazy as the poets, just as prone to tears over gardening or air conditioners, just as ready to kite a cheque or binge on cookie dough.

Here is a fundamental conflict in educated society: We are not supposed to value beauty so highly, and yet who can defend against its sheer power to move, its rhetorical force?

Personally, I see little distinction between an artistic mentality and criminality. You couldn't possibly create a compelling story without some wickedness or some fascination with the disgusting. Being good is a hindrance to a writer.

Anyone who has set out to invent a purely imaginary story knows that the whole thing is fantasy, from beginning to end; there must be a sense of magic created about the most restrained of naturalism.

Ah, the intractable Canadian problem: Winter and finery are basically incompatible.

An Indian tribe is sovereign to the extent that the U.S. permits it to be sovereign.

They woke together and fell apart.