Against the sustained tick of a watch, fiction takes the measure of a life, a season, a look exchanged, the turning point, desire as brief as a dream, the grief and terror that after childhood we cease to express. — Mavis Gallant Copy Share Image
I still do not know what impels anyone sound of mind to leave dry land and spend a lifetime describing people who do not exist. If it is child's play, an extension of make believe - something one is frequently… — Mavis Gallant Copy Share Image
“Like his father, like Jules Renard, he had been carried along the slow, steady swindle of history and experience.” — Mavis Gallant Copy Share Image
“Converts have it soft," said Mary. "They come to it late, without ever having had the Devil under the bed. They sail in and… — Mavis Gallant Copy Share Image
“If your life isn't exactly the way you want it to be by the time you are forty-five," said Walter's father, whom he admired,… — Mavis Gallant Copy Share Image
All lives are interesting; no one life is more interesting than another. Its fascination depends on how much is revealed, and in what manner. — Mavis Gallant Copy Share Image
I believed that if I was to call myself a writer, I should live on writing. If I could not live on it, even… — Mavis Gallant Copy Share Image
[My father] had spent his own short time like a priest in charge of a relic, forever expecting the blessed blood to liquefy. — Mavis Gallant Copy Share Image
“There is a term for people caught on a street crossing after the light has changed: "pedestrian-traffic residue".” — Mavis Gallant Copy Share Image
Like every other form of art, literature is no more and nothing less than a matter of life and death. The only question worth… — Mavis Gallant Copy Share Image
I write every day as a matter of course It is not a burden. It is the way I live. — Mavis Gallant Copy Share Image
No one is as real to me as people in the novel. It grows like a living thing. When I realize they do not… — Mavis Gallant Copy Share Image
“My mother has lived every day of her life as if it were preparation for some kind of crisis.” — Mavis Gallant Copy Share Image
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