Marian Engel Quotes & Sayings

Happiness is a fragile thing, and alcohol, as I know from the house I grew up in, is dangerous to it. — Marian Engel

So this was her kingdom: an octagonal house, a roomful of books, and a bear. — Marian Engel

There's a kind of virgin one only becomes with difficulty. — Marian Engel

All intellectual missionaries tend to lechery. — Marian Engel

Because what she disliked in men was not their eroticism, but their assumption that women had none. Which left women with nothing to be but housemaids. — Marian Engel

Remember that it is not enough to have everything around you beautiful, remember that there must also be change and flux, because it is through change that we pretend that we can make decisions, and keep our pride, and go on pretending that both change and choice exist. — Marian Engel

There is a difference between art and life and that difference is readability. — Marian Engel

She was trying to decide to regard the black flies as a good symptom of the liveliness of the North, a sign that nature will never capitulate, that man is red in tooth and claw but there is something that cannot be controlled by him, when a critter no larger than a fruitfly tore a hunk out of her shin through her trousers. — Marian Engel

Where have I been? she wondered. Is a life that can now be considered an absence a life?

For some time things had been going badly for her. She could cite nothing in particular as a problem; rather, it was as if life in general had a grudge against her. Things persisted in turning grey. Although at first she had revelled in the erudite seclusion of her job, in the protection against the vulgarities of the world that it offered, after five years she now felt that in some way it had aged her disproportionately, that she was as old as the yellowed papers she spent her days unfolding. When, very occasionally, she raised her eyes from the past and surveyed the present, it faded from her view and became as ungraspable as a mirage. Although she had discussed this with the Director, who had waved away her condition of mind as an occupational hazard, she was still not satisfied that this was how the only life she had been offered should be lived. — Marian Engel

She makes her little house to shine, she thought. — Marian Engel

the image of the Good Life long ago stamped on her soul was quite different from this, and she suffered in contrast. — Marian Engel

There was something aggressive in her that always went too far. She had thrown a marcasite egg at her lover's window once, a green egg she particularly valued. She had stayed in this house too long. She had fucked the Director. She had let her breasts hang out before Homer. She had gone too far. No doubt if she had children she would neglect them. — Marian Engel

I have tried and failed to lead a conventional life. When I try to be like other people, I fall out of bed. — Marian Engel