Miriam Toews quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Miriam Toews

Miriam Toews Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Miriam Toews on Wise Famous Quotes.

This is a cliche, but in fiction, I feel it is easier for me to get to some sort of truth, some kind of more honest writing.

I couldn't see him but I could hear him snoring softly, humming, like a little airplane lost in the clouds.

I spent 18 years in a small Mennonite town in the middle of the Canadian prairies.

We don't choose the books we write; they choose us.

Books are what save us. Books are what don't save us.

I understand that if you say a certain word over and over and it begins to make you feel bad then you should goddamn stop saying that word.

Where does violence go, if not directly back into our blood and bones?

Being seasick at sea is not the same as being homesick at home.

Ignore all advice about writing. Leave your blood on every page. Every page!

Let's not have forced gaiety this Christmas, said Nora, like it was a dish. We'll have a tiny bit of it, I said.

Her faith in a loving and forgiving God is strong, but she worships laughter.

But love, like a mushroom high compared with the buzz from cheap weed, outlasts grief.

Go into hard things quickly, eagerly, then retreat.

And what have you been up to? she asked.
Oh, I don't know really, I said. Not much. Learning how to be a good loser.

Maybe she was enjoying a moment in her life, a sliver of light, a flash memory of one of her kids, something sweet and approaching reality.

You always say oh, that's so unprofessional as though there's some definition of professional that's also a moral imperative for how to behave.

I don't even know what 'successful' means. We're all failures. Look at the world. We're all complicit.

... just because someone is eating the ashes of your protagonist doesn't mean you stop telling the story.

There are no windows within the dark house of depression through which to see others, only mirrors.

Life being what it is, one dreams not of revenge. One just dreams.

You put the fist in pacifist?

There was no freer soul in the world than me at age nine.

Remember what mom used to say? "Shred the guilt.

And all our righteousnesses are filthy rags and we all do fade as a leaf and our inequities like the wind have taken us away

Can't you just be like the rest of us, normal and sad and fucked up and alive and remorseful?

I love road trips. You get into this Zen rhythm; throw sense of time out the window.

He says it's a condition of our relationship that I don't smoke, she says. We laugh. We are tired. Too tired to confront conditions.

You don't need a religious background to strive for something good, for genuine compassion and love for others.

If, along the way, something is gained, then something will also be lost.

'Irma Voth' is my sixth book, but it's only the third time I've featured Mennonite settings and characters.

He's in love with the notion of shame and he traffics the shit like a schoolground pusher, spreading it around but never personally using.

Wild was the worst thing you could become in a community rigged for compliance.

But there is a kindness here, a complicated kindness. You can see it sometimes in the eyes of people when they look at you and don't know what to say.

And I was scrambling around trying to make money and to study and master (and fail at mastering) the art of being an adult.

Is it wrong to trust in a beautiful lie if it helps you get through life?

All the books I've read, I've read at the right moment.

At one point in my life, I wanted to do a master's degree in Irish literature, but I ended up getting pregnant instead.

David Bergen is a master of taut, spare prose that's both erotic and hypnotic ...

In writing fiction, I can be free. I can use my life. The raw material is my experiences.

Do you know that hobo is an acronym for Homeward Bound?

She lived in her head and that's why it glowed.

When I put the poncho on to show Elf she said farewell to arms.

If you have to end up in the hospital, try to focus all your pain in your heart rather than your head.

I want her face to feel at home on an ancient coin, he said. I want her eyes to harm me.

They say nothing is my fault, and I wish they wouldn't say that. How can a man be forgiven if nothing is his fault?

You still have to eat.

Perhaps depression is caused by asking oneself too many unanswerable questions.

My words aren't only words. They're pictures and tears and imperfect offerings of love and self-inflicted shots to my brain.

Why is it so painful to write about people who aren't assholes? I asked Wilson.
Because I would start to love them, he said.

Public enemy number one for these men was a girl with a book

Shoo the sparrow away and get on with supper. This is the first part of my new life strategy.

And I put on "All My Love" and watched the sun rise yet again and thought thank you Robert Plant for all your love but do you have anymore?

My mother was so confident of being rescued in life, one way or another or another.

Nothing happens in my life. Nothing has to happen, she said, for it to be life.

Do you feel that we can rebel against our oppressors without losing our love, our tolerance, and our ability to forgive?

The director said he's got a haunted soul and a natural sweetness.

That to truly know happiness is to know the fleeting nature of everything, joy, pain, safety and happiness itself.

She was becoming sad. There is no joy involved in following others' expectations of yourself

It's raining questions around here. A person could drown in them.