Quotes from Timothy Findley

As for the myths, take anyone's life and deny that most of it is deliberate self-delusion - an aggrandizement - a mixture of lies and truth, of what was wanted and what was had, producing the necessary justification for having been granted life in the first place. I was struck like a match, Lily wrote. I had no option but to burn. You can put a period after that. Lily did. It was the story of her life.

no one belongs to anyone. We're all cut off at birth with a knife and left at the mercy of strangers. You hear that? Strangers. I know what you want to do. I know you're going to go away to be a soldier. Well-you can go to hell. I'm not responsible. I'm just another stranger. Birth I can give you-but life I cannot. I can't keep anyone alive. Not anymore.

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

The spaces between the perceiver and the thing perceived can [...] be closed with a shout of recognition.

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.

I have dreamt of a life you will never know; the life of a loving and caring companion. I simply thought you should know. I see that you are in trouble. I watch and listen to you. I want to help, but you won't let me. So be it. I love you still. Do what you will, I shall watch over you.

I can't work in a house where there's saints. The minute there's saints, the devil sends messengers

Mrs Ross adjusted her veil but did not put the flask away... 'Why is this happening to us, Davenport? What does it mean - to kill your children? Kill them and then go in there and sing about it! What does that mean?' She wept-but angrily.

What you people who weren't yet born can never know is what it meant to sleep in cities under silent falls of snow when all night long the only sounds you heard were dogs that parked at trains that passed so far away they took a short cut through your dreams and no one even woke. It was the war that changed that. It was. After the Great War for Civilization - sleep was different everywhere...

He took his aim. His arm wavered. His eyes burned with sweat. Why didn't someone come and jump on his back and make him stop? He fired. A chair fell over in his mind.

in a way being loved is like being told you never have to die.

Literature was intended to be dangerous. Art was meant to be dangerous. Ideas were nothing if they were not dangerous.