Quotes from Mordecai Richler

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.

You're convinced that anybody who meets you for the first time will consider you a shit, so you take preventive action. Relax, boychick. When they get to know you better they will realize that they were right. You are a shit.

Posso querelare per diffamazione un tizio che mi accusa nero su bianco di avere picchiato mia moglie, di essere un plagiario, uno spacciatore, un alcolizzato con tendenze violente, e con tutta probabilità anche un assassino?" "Non saprei. Mi sembra che il tizio sia piuttosto bene informato".

We could never agree about Boogie and I didn't share Miriam's reverence for professors. In fact, just in case I haven't mentioned it before, the pride of my office wall is my framed high-school graduation certificate, lit from above. Miriam has reproached me for it. "Take it down, darling," she once pleaded. But it still hangs there.

I thought, breaking into a sweat, I'd better call Saul. I owe Kate an apology... Damn damn damn.

I didn't know about beauty, he had thought. Nobody ever told me.

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

And what if Miriam and I were never to be reconciled?

C'è chi colleziona francobolli, o scatole di fiammiferi» mi ha detto una volta. «Tu collezioni rancori».

All the same, it strikes me as unfair that I still have to defend myself against her moral judgements. My continuing need for her approbation is pathetic. Twice now I have stopped myself on the street to remonstrate with her, a crazy old coot talking to himself.

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.

and then I began to drift, fighting tears. I used to come here with Miriam. Miriam, my heart's desire. What was troubling her this morning? Maybe Kate had reproached her on the phone for leaving me? How dare Kate. Oh yeah? Go for it, my darling. Remind her of what she's missing. No, don't.

Nothing is absolute any longer, Mr. Panofsky. There is a choice of beliefs and a choice of truths to go with them. If you choose not to choose then there is no truth at all. There are only points of view.…" "Still, that is no answer." "What if there are no answers? Or if the answers offered are not suitable – what then? Perhaps there are only more questions.

Ernst was still in the Eastern Zone, about ninety kilometres from Berlin, when the truck emerged so inexplicably out of nowhere that it seemed to have been created by the rain itself.

One final thought. In the years leading up to my trial, whenever I was caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highway leading to my cottage, creeping along behind a battered, rust eaten pick-up truck with a sticker on its rear bumper that read JESUS SAVES, I used to think don't count on it, buster. Now I am no longer sure.

Oh, dio mio, se fossi un angelo del Signore segnerei con una croce le porte di casa dei miei figli, in modo da tener lontano le sventure e la malattia. Purtroppo, per quell'alto incarico mi mancano i requisiti, e quando avevo ancora un ruolo nelle loro vite sono stato impaziente, critico e punitivo. Sbagliando sempre tutto.

In those olden times you didn't have to be a space scientist to manage the gadget that flicked your TV on and off, that ridiculous thingamabob that now comes with twenty push buttons, God knows what for. Doctors made house calls. Rabbis were guys. Kids were raised by their moms instead of in child-care pens like piglets. Software meant haberdashery.

C'è stato un tempo in cui osavo sognare che Miriam e io, superati i novanta, saremmo spirati insieme, come Filemone e Bauci. E allora un munifico Zeus, con un lieve tocco del caduceo, ci avrebbe trasformato in due alberi vicini, coi rami che si sfiorano d'inverno, le foglie che si intrecciano a primavera.

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.

Better my right hand should have been cut off. Go know I was setting in motion events that would lead to the ruin of one of the few truly good men I ever met.

Ai miei tempi quando una donna diventava una star del cinema doveva girare in occhiali da sole e foulard, se non voleva essere fermata ogni due metri; adesso basta che si vesta.

Shame on you. Don't tell me you've been married for an hour and you've already got eyes for another woman.

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

I am an impenitent rotter to this day, a malevolent man, exulting in the transgressions of my betters.