Carol Shields quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Carol Shields

Carol Shields Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Carol Shields on Wise Famous Quotes.

A childhood is what anyone wants to remember of it. It leaves behind no fossils, except perhaps in fiction.

His voice, you might say, became the place where he lived, the way other people live in their furniture or gestures

A thought comes into her head: that lately she doesn't ask herself what is possible, but rather what possibilities remain.

Beauty takes courage. Courage itself takes courage.

The recounting of a life is a cheat, of course.

There are chapters in every life which are seldom read, and certainly not aloud.

I'm concerned about the unknowability of other people.

Eventually, everything gets stuck between a pair of parentheses or buried in the bottom of a trunk.

Our friendship is made up of these brief frenzied exchanges, but the quality of our conversation, for all its feverish outpouring, is genuine.

Here's to another year and let's hope it's above ground.

He dares not concern himself with the future for fear of disturbing the present.

It grieved him to think of that paltry, guarded, nut-like thing that was his artistic reputation.

Boiled down, isn't love just a form of vanity? You know, the wish to be adored. To be the absolute center for someone else.

Despair did not suit her looks. Goodness cannot cope with badness - it's too good, you see, too stupidly good.

What I'd like is a lobotomy, a clean job, the top of my head neatly sawn off and designated contents removed.

Words are our life. We are human because we use language. So I think we are less human when we use less language.

So this is where the years of maturity deliver us - to this needy, selfish, unwieldy wish to be somebody else's first and primal other.

Women were supposed to be strong, but they weren't really, they weren't allowed to be.

From surfeit to loss is a short line.

I am not at peace.' Daisy Goodwill's final (unspoken) words.

These are frightening times ... when she feels herself annointed by loneliness.

Anyone's childhood can be an act of disablement if rehearsed and replayed and squinted at in a certain light ...

Time and chance. The twin offspring of destiny. That wondrous branching of our fates.

I like to chant a couple of lines of poetry into the ozone layer every day or so, another caller says.

In a long and healthy life, which is what most of us have, there is plenty of time.

These hips are mighty hips.
These hips are magic hips.
I have known them
to put a spell on a man
and spin him like a top

It's hard work being a person, you have to do it every single day.

This last year she has been in danger of becoming an eccentric or else one of those persons who does not bother to put a saucer under her cup.

For some, religion is the cement that seals shut their door on the world

To be a romantic is to believe anything can happen to us.

He wondered exactly how lost a person could get. Lost at sea, lost in the woods. Fatally lost.

Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.

The recounting of a life is a cheat ... even our own stories are obscenely distorted ...

This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.

Routine is liberating, it makes you feel in control.

Whenever I meet anyone new, I don't say, "Tell me about your belief system." I say, "Tell me about your average day".

Either we're all ordinary, or else none of us is ordinary.

The scolding voice is her own, so abrasive and quick, yet so powerless to move her.

The silence is perfect, and yet a torment ...