Quotes from Timothy Findley

I doubt we will ever be forgiven. All I hope is – they'll remember we were human beings

... too much brooding, not enough doing.

Elizabeth Hay has intelligence coming out of her fingertips - integrity, insight, and wonder in every paragraph of her writing.She connects. She stirs and provokes.

There are no beginnings, not even to stories. There are only places where you make an entrance into someone else's life and either stay or turn and go away.

Time is light, time is dark. You either dance, or you fall.

All of this happened a long time ago. But not so long ago that everyone who played a part in it is dead. Some can still be met in dark old rooms with nurses in attendance.

La nuit tombe, le jour se lève. Toujours.

You begin to arrange your research in bundles - letters - photos - telegrams. This is that last thing you see before you put on your overcoat: Robert and Rowena with Meg: Rowena seated astride the pony – Robert holding her in place. On the back is written: 'Look! You can see our breath!' And you can.

I tell you Charlie, I was there waiting in that field. waiting for Ede and Tom to find me. You don't think two people come together for nothing, do you? They were together because I was waiting to be found... Then she looked straight into my face and said to me: You know it, too, Charlie. All that time you waited for me to find you. What if I hadn't? What if I'd said: I won't? She turned, and clinging to my arm, she surveyed the fields of snow the stretched away to the confining wall.

The occupants of memory have to be protected from strangers.

So far, you have read of the deaths of 557,017 people – one of whom was killed by a streetcar, one of whom died of bronchitis and one of whom died in a barn with her rabbits.

It was not the thought of seeing God that upset her. It was the thought of being seen.

In the wilderness, I found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD... And I have made my sacrifice accordingly.

When Mrs Ross asked him what he was thinking of, he shrugged. But he was thinking of the time he'd climbed the steeple of a church when he was ten-and had seen, for the very first time, the world spread out around him like a gift.

Master Stuart made his letters into paper darts and launched them page by page from the roof of the house-watching them descend and fade into the green ravine below...Some he saved to trade at school for other artifacts of war sent home by other elder brothers like his own-but only the letters mailed from France were worthy of this exchange. They had to have the smell of fire.

Houses, trees and fields of flax once flourished here. Summers had been blue with flowers. Now it was a shallow sea of stinking grey from end to end. And this is where you fought the war.

Your blood is the sea continued in your veins. We are the ocean - walking on the land

Seulement, en supprimant l'assassin de son fils, on ne supprimait pas le meurtre. On le prolongeait.

I knew that most of what is frightening and much of what is evil happens by the light of day. No need for darkness. Caesar, after all, had been murdered in the presence of a hundred people and more - some time between high noon and five o'clock. Right in these waters off the coast of Maine the most terrifying sharks are the ones we see in the radiance of fear. The real ones - darkened below us - do no harm until they rise towards the light. If only, I began to wish, it would get dark.

Happiness is not our goal. The achievement of happiness deflects us from our true destiny which is the utter realization of self.

I've never met—have you?—a truly sophisticated man. World-weary and discreet—of course. But never sophisticated.

only one deaf God, who cannot see, remains—claiming all of creation as His own. If people would invest one hundredth of their devotion to this God in the living brothers and sisters amongst whom they stand, we might have a chance of surviving one another. As it is...

You die when you can't be real, Dolly thought. When you can't see who you are and when you cannot see what it.

My whole life is out here-the whole of my life...I'd come here naked, as a boy-straight from that river out there-throw my clothes on the floor and climb into that loft and lie there dreaming in the hay...All those summer days-scouring the banks of the Avon for smooth, round stones-scaring up ducks and foxes-kingfishers-swallows...somebody's dog...Oh, God-I want it back. Throwing stones that never reached the other shore. And the games-the games-the games, and all my friends...