Margaret Laurence Quotes & Sayings

In some families, please is described as the magic word. In our house, however, it was sorry. — Margaret Laurence

As we grow older we should become not less radical but more so. — Margaret Laurence

Even if heaven were real, and measured as Revelation says, so many cubits this wayand that, how gimcrack a place it would be, crammed with its pavements of gold, its gates of pearl and topaz, like a gigantic chunkof costume jewelry. — Margaret Laurence

I used to think there would be a blinding flash of light someday, and then I would be wise and calm and would know how to cope with everything and my kids would rise up and call me blessed. Now I see that whatever I'm like, I'm pretty well stuck with it for life. Hell of a revelation that turned out to be. — Margaret Laurence

Follow your heart, and you perish. — Margaret Laurence

By their garbage shall ye know them," Christie yells, like a preacher, a downy preacher. "I swear, by the ridge of tears and by the valour of my ancestors, I say unto you, Morag Gunn, lass, that by their bloody goddamn fucking garbage shall ye christly well know them. — Margaret Laurence

My mother sighed, making me feel that I was placing an intolerable burden on her, and yet making me resent having to feel this weight. She looked tired, as she often did these days. Her tiredness bored me, made me want to attack her for it. — Margaret Laurence

They remain shadows. Two sepia shadows on an old snapshot, two barely moving shadows in my head, shadows whose few
remaining words and acts I have invented. Perhaps I only want their forgiveness for having forgotten them. I remember their deaths, but not their lives. Yet they're inside me, flowing unknown in my blood and moving unrecognized in my skull. — Margaret Laurence

Must've been off my head, wandering around the harbour so long. Didn't even get the nightgowns. Are the kids okay? Damn, I wish I didn't always have to be home at the right time. At the Day of Judgement, God will say Stacy MacAindra, what have you done with your life? And I'll say, Well, let's see, Sir, I think I loved my kids. And He'll say, Are you certain of that? And I'll say, God, I'm not certain about anything any more. So He'll say, To hell with you, then. We're all positive thinkers up here. Then again, maybe He wouldn't. Maybe He'd say, Don't worry, Stacy, I'm not all that certain, either. Sometimes I wonder if I even exist. And I'd say, I know what you mean, Lord. I have the same trouble with myself. — Margaret Laurence

Why doesn't Prin go and get her own goddamn blistering bloody shitty jelly doughnuts? — Margaret Laurence

Will we ever reach a point when it is no longer necessary to say Them and Us? I believe we must reach that point, or perish. — Margaret Laurence

If I hadn't had my children, I wouldn't have written more and better, I would have written less and worse. — Margaret Laurence

I stepped inside the front hall and kicked off my snow boots. I slammed the door behind me, making the dark ruby and emerald glass shake in the small leaded panes. I slid purposely on the hall rug, causing it to bunch and crinkle on the slippery polished oak of the floor. — Margaret Laurence

The infinite capacity of humans to wound one another without meaning or wanting to — Margaret Laurence

Too bad to deprive them, but if a person doesn't look after herself in this world, no one else is likely to. — Margaret Laurence

What goes on inside isn't ever the same as what goes on outside. — Margaret Laurence

Is it a mausoleum, and I, the Egyptiab, mummified with pillows and my own flesh, through some oversight enbalmed alive? There must be some mistake. — Margaret Laurence

When I say "work" I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs. — Margaret Laurence

How it irks me to have to take her hand, allow her to pull my dress over my head, undo my corsets and strip them off my, and have her see my blue veined swollen flesh and the hairy triangle that still proclaims with lunatic insistence a non-existent womanhood. — Margaret Laurence

Well, you're young. You know a lot you won't know later on. — Margaret Laurence

Privacy is a privilege not granted to the aged or the young. — Margaret Laurence

I am rampant with memory. — Margaret Laurence

I can't say it. Now, at last, it becomes impossible for me to mouth the words
I'm fine. I won't say anything. — Margaret Laurence

Who wants tea and sympathy? Let's have coffee and sex, Stacey, eh? — Margaret Laurence

Bless me or not, Lord, just as You please, for I'll not beg. — Margaret Laurence

Well, you're young. You know a whole lot you won't know later on." ~ Christie Logan — Margaret Laurence

Animals are less alone with roaring than we are with all these words. — Margaret Laurence

I went upstairs to my room. Momentarily I felt a sense of calm, almost acceptance. Rest beyond the river. I knew now what that meant. It meant Nothing. It meant only silence forever. — Margaret Laurence

Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all your fellow humans everywhere in the world. — Margaret Laurence

The struggle is not lost. I believe we have to live, as long as we live, in the expectation and hope of changing the world for the better. That may sound naive. It may even sound sentimental. Never mind: I believe it. What are we to live for, except life itself? And, with all our doubts, with all our flaws, with all our problems, I believe that we will carry on, with God's help. — Margaret Laurence

I can't change what's happened to me in my life, or make what's not occurred take place. But I can't say I like it, or accept it, or believe it's for the best. I don't and never shall, not even if I'm damned for it. — Margaret Laurence

He was a mean man, it's true, but he got ahead. A man gets on by working harder than the rest - that's what he used to say - and if he doesn't get anywhere, he hasn't a soul to blame but himself. — Margaret Laurence

The dead don't bear a grudge nor seek a blessing. The dead don't rest uneasy. Only the living. — Margaret Laurence

It is my feeling that as we grow older we should become not less radical but more so. I do not, of course, mean this in any political-party sense, but rather in a willingness to struggle for those things in which we passionately believe. Social activism and the struggle for social justice are often thought of as the natural activities of the young but not of the middle-aged or the elderly. In fact, I don't think this was ever true. — Margaret Laurence

Where I'm going, anything may happen. Nothing may happen. Maybe I will marry a middle-aged widower, or a longshoreman, or a cattle-hoof-trimmer, or a barrister or a thief. And have my children in time. Or maybe not. Most of the chances are against it. But not, I think, quite all. What will happen? What will happen. It may be that my children will always be temporary, never to be held. But so are everyone's.
I may become, in time, slightly more eccentric all the time. I may begin to wear outlandish hats, feathered and sequinned and rosetted, and dangling necklaces made from coy and tiny seashells which I've gathered myself along the beach and painted coral-pink with nail polish. And all the kids will laugh, and I'll laugh, too, in time. I will be light and straight as any feather. The wind will bear me, and I will drift and settle, and drift and settle. Anything may happen, where I'm going. — Margaret Laurence

And yet, for a writer of fiction, part of the heart remains that of a stranger, for what we are trying to do is to understand those others who are our fictional characters, somehow to gain entrance to their minds and feelings, to respect them for themselves as human individuals, and to portray them as truly as we can. The whole process of fiction is a mysterious one, and a writer, however experienced, remains in some ways a perpetual amateur, or perhaps a perpetual traveller, an explorer of those inner territories, those strange lands of the heart and spirit. — Margaret Laurence

Pride was my wilderness, and the demon that led me there was fear. — Margaret Laurence

It would be nice if we were different people but we are not different people. We are ourselves and we are sure as hell not going to undergo some total transformation at this point. — Margaret Laurence

Nothing is clear now. Something must be the matter with my way of viewing things. I have no middle view. Either I fix on a detail and see it as thought it were magnified
a leaf with all its veins perceived, the fine hairs on a man's hands
or else the world recedes and becomes blurred, artificial, indefinite, an abstract painting of a world. The darkening sky is hugely blue, gashed with rose, blood, flame from the volcano or wound or flower of the lowering sun. The wavering green, the sea of grass, piercingly bright. Black tree trunks, contorted, arching over the river. — Margaret Laurence

To move to a new place
that's the greatest excitement. For a while you believe you carry nothing with you
all is canceled from before, or cauterized, and you begin again and nothing will go wrong this time. — Margaret Laurence

Everything drifts. Everything is slowly swirling, philosophies tangled with the grocery lists, unreal-real anxieties like rose thorns waiting to tear the uncertain flesh, nonentities of thoughts floating like plankton, green and orange particles, seaweed
lots of that, dark purple and waving, sharks with fins like cutlasses, herself held underwater by her hair, snared around auburn-rusted anchor chains. — Margaret Laurence

I've never been able to force a novel. I always had the sense something being given to me. You can't sit around and wait until inspiration strikes, but neither can you force into being something that isn't there. — Margaret Laurence

So, if this were indeed my Final Hour, these would be my words to you. I would not claim to pass on any secret of life, for there is none, or any wisdom except the passionate plea of caring ... Try to feel, in your heart's core, the reality of others. This is the most painful thing in the world, probably, and the most necessary. In times of personal adversity, know that you are not alone. Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all of your fellow humans everywhere in the world. Know that your commitment is above all to life itself. — Margaret Laurence

As a devout Baptist, she believed it was a sin to pray for anything for yourself. You ought to pray only for strength to bear whatever the Lord saw fit to send you, she thought. I was never able to follow this advice, for although I would often feel a sense of uneasiness over the tone of my prayers, I was the kind of person who prayed frantically-Please, God, please, please, PLEASE let Ross MacVey like me better than Mavis. — Margaret Laurence

Holidays are enticing only for the first week or so. After that, it is no longer such a novelty to rise late and have little to do. — Margaret Laurence

Women, as well as men, in all ages and in all places, have danced on the earth, danced the life dance, danced joy, danced grief, danced despair, and danced hope. Literally and metaphorically, by their very lives. — Margaret Laurence