Guy Vanderhaeghe Quotes & Sayings

My longing was for Russia ... Not Soviet Russia. But nineteenth-century Russia, the Russia of Dostoevsky's saintly prostitutes and Alyosha; of Tolstoy's Pierre; and Aksionov, the sufferer in "God Sees the Truth But Waits." A country where the characters in books were allowed to ask one another the questions: How must I live to be happy? What is goodness? Why does man suffer? What is to be done? — Guy Vanderhaeghe

It is in the face of all this visual chaos, so opposed to order and simplicity, that I suddenly, perhaps a little guiltily, recall my vow to simplify my life. When I made that promise I had in mind the image of the ancient Greek subsisting on a fragment of pungent cheese, coarse bread, a handful of sun-warmed olives, a little watered wine; a man who discussed the Good, the True, the Beautiful with grave delight, and piped clear music in a sylvan glade. But I feel the absence of hills clothed in myrtle and thyme; of the Great Mother, Homer's wine-dark sea. Good resolutions, it seems, require good scenery. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

They teach us that in school, matters of principle. I swear it's a plot to get us all slaughtered the day they graduate us out the door. It's their revenge, see? Here we are reading books in literature class about some banana who's only got one oar in the water to start with, and then he pops it out worrying about principles. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

As long as I can remember I have been carelessly casting myself uninvited into novels where no self-respecting novelist would have me. This literary gate-crashing of mine must be a sign of a wretched thirsting after immortality. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

History tells us what people do; historical fiction helps us imagine how they felt. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

The fact remains, I was never meant to sell china. Only truly saintly men are cut out for that; the sort of men who trudge the roads to Benares, or reside on the icy hilltops speculating on infinity. It takes more faith than I can summon. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

She'd whisper to me to take my tiny piece of happiness, hold its honey in my mouth until it melts away. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

But there was also the shame of a man who suddenly discovers that all his lies were transparent, and everything he thought so safely hidden had always been in plain view. He had been living one of those dreams. The kind of dream in which you are walking down the street, meeting friends and neighbours, smiling and nodding, and when you arrive at home an pass a mirror you see for the first time that you are stark naked. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

His life, like every other life, could be graphed: an ascent that rises to a peak, pauses at a particular node, and then descends. Only the gradient changes in any particular case: this child's was steeper than most, his descent swifter. We all ripen. We are all bound by the same ineluctable law, the same mathematical certainty. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

The Wars is a great book, rich in its images, its language, its construction, and, ultimately, its conception. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

Embrace one another with courage. Search each other's hearts for hidden suffering and never flee what you discover! That's the ticket! — Guy Vanderhaeghe

News of the disaster at Little Bighorn reached the Eastern Seaboard shortly after July 4, and not just any ordinary July 4 but the grand celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Republic. A country feeling its oats, flexing its muscles, vigorous and rich, cocksure and confident, has seen the impossible happen, the unthinkable become fact. Sitting Bull has spoiled their glorious Centennial, pissed on Custer's golden head, the head of a genuine Civil War hero, the head of someone who has recently been touted as a future President of the United States. Somehow a wedding and a funeral got booked for the same hour in the same church. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

I remember you organized the big laundry party and all of our friends took their dirty clothes to the laundromat and drank wine out of a wineskin until the manager threw us out because you kept yelling that there ought to be a prize given to the owner of the biggest pair of boxer shorts. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

Not to do as the child wishes would be wrong because he is born on a path, and it would be evil, a crime against nature to make him deny his spirit. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

Of course, I could holler Religious Persecution. Not that it would do any good. But it's something I happen to know quite a bit about, seeing as Religious Persecution was my assignment in Social Studies that time we studied Man's Inhumanity to Man. The idea was to write a two-thousand-word report proving how everybody has been a shit to everybody else through the ages, and where did it ever get them? This is supposed to improve us somehow, I guess. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

A man descending is propelled by inertia; the only initiative left him is whether or not he decides to enjoy the passing scene. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

I've always found that a really lively argument depends on the ignorance of the combatants. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

Most of those characters with all the answers couldn't poor piss out of a rubber boot if they read the instructions printed on the sole. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

It might be high summer all about but inside me everything is fall. The lonesomeness of a sad, slow closing of days, knowing frost is nigh and wind needling through the cabin chinks is just around the bend. That's me, right now. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

Sometimes I feel entirely disassociated from what I do. It's a malady of the modern age. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

He said there were two kinds of bitterness: one that takes away the appetite and one that stimulates it. Pepper, he said, was of the first kind - it burns the tongue and nothing more. But horse-radish, though bitter, sharpens the hunger and makes a man impatient for the good things of the meal. So, he said, if a man becomes only bitter and downcast he goes no further. But a little bitterness, a little horse-radish, may give one an appetite for perfection.
"How quaint," said Ogle, "how undeniably folksy. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

Do not follow your present course. It is a dead end. The dead end of the perfect English gentleman. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

He had the neurotic's partial vision of life, and a sense of the absurdity which adheres to all effort when observed in the light of a long enough perspective. This had never made him popular. — Guy Vanderhaeghe