All My Puny Sorrows Quotes & Sayings

Nic loves Elf's odd requests, each one is like a holiday for him ... and he's not a Mennonite, which is important
in a man
for Elf. Mennonite men have wasted too much of her time already, trying to harvest her soul and shackle her to shame. — Miriam Toews

When I listened to her play I felt I should not be in the same room with her. There were hundreds of people but nobody left. It was a private pain. By private I mean to say unknowable. Only the music knew and it held secrets so that her playing was a puzzle, a whisper, and people afterward stood in the bar and drank and said nothing because they were complicit. There were no words. — Miriam Toews

Yolandi, the central character in the book "All My Puny Sorrows" says that "the core of the argument for it [assisted suicide] is maximizing individual autonomy and minimizing human suffering" (p. 222). — Miriam Toews