Mavis Gallant Quotes

Decide what the rest of your life is to be. Whatever you are now, you might be forever.

Success can only be measured in terms of distance traveled.

A short story is what you see when you look out of the window.

There are a great many opinions in this world, and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble.

All lives are interesting; no one life is more interesting than another. Its fascination depends on how much is revealed, and in what manner.

Writing is like a love affair: the beginning is the best part.

She and Marie were Montreal girls, not trained to accompany heroes, or to hold out for dreams, but just to be patient.

I write every day as a matter of course It is not a burden. It is the way I live.

I believed that if I was to call myself a writer, I should live on writing. If I could not live on it, even simply, I should destroy every scrap, every trace, every notebook and live some other way.

A writer's life stands in relation to his work as a house does to a garden, related but distinct.

[My father] had spent his own short time like a priest in charge of a relic, forever expecting the blessed blood to liquefy.

I began to ration my writing, for fear I would dream through life as my father had done. I was afraid I had inherited a poisoned gene from him, a vocation without a gift.

... appeals to memory were never perfectly answered.

Spring had been the season for dying in the old days. Invalids who had struggled through the dark comfort of winter took fright as the night receded.

There are a great many opinions in this world and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble.