The recounting of a life is a cheat...even our own stories are obscenely distorted. — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
It's the arrangement of events which makes the stories. It's throwing away, compressing, underlining. Hindsight can give structure to anything, but you have to be able to see it. Breathing, waking and sleeping: our lives are steamed and shaped into… — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
“Dreaming her way backward in time, resurrecting images, the young girl realized, with wonder, that the absent are always present, that you don't make… — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
“He wondered exactly how lost a person could get. Lost at sea, lost in the woods. Fatally lost.” — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
“Dorrie gave Larry's hand an excited, distracted squeeze that said: almost home. They were about to be matter-of-factly claimed by familiar streets and houses… — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
“…it's occurred to her that there are millions, billions, of other men and women in the world who wake up early in their separate… — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
nothing she did or said was quite what she meant but still her life could be called a monument shaped in a slant of… — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
So this is where the years of maturity deliver us - to this needy, selfish, unwieldy wish to be somebody else's first and primal… — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
In a long and healthy life, which is what most of us have, there is plenty of time. — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
“This was during a period in my reading life when I was given to understand that "relating" to the fictional characters or situation was… — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself… — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
A woman's life isn't worth a plateful of cabbage if she hasn't felt life stir under her heart. Taking a little one to nurse,… — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
“I won't even mention the swift, transitory reward of lemon spray wax. Danielle Westerman and I have discussed the matter of housework. Not surprisingly,… — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
“A Canadian journalist named Pinky Fulham was killed when a soft drinks vending machine overturned, crushing him.” — Carol Shields Copy Share Image
