Quotes from Robertson Davies

He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.

Many a promising career has been wrecked by marrying the wrong sort of woman. The right sort of woman can distinguish between Creative Lassitude and plain shiftlessness.

The world is burdened with young fogies. Old men with ossified minds are easily dealt with. But men who look young, act young and everlastingly harp on the fact that they are young, but who nevertheless think and act with a degree of caution that would be excessive in their grandfathers, are the curse of the world. Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

You never see what you want to see, forever playing to the gallery.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.

Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

This is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free, but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Goodnight.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get.

I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind... At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme, I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy, and wise in spite of themselves.

This is one of the cruelties of the theatre of life; we all think of ourselves as stars and rarely recognize it when we are indeed mere supporting characters or even supernumeraries.

One learns one's mystery at the price of one's innocence.

To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.

We tend to think human knowledge as progressive; because we know more and more, our parents and grandparents are back numbers. But a contrary theory is possible - that we simply recognize different things at different times and in different ways.

It was as though she was an exile from a world that saw things her way

I was afraid and did not know what I feared, which is the worst kind of fear.

Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.