Miriam Toews

Her faith in a loving and forgiving God is strong, but she worships laughter.

— Miriam Toews

“I heard Tash say: Nomi, you’re sad man. Get a grip. Walk away. What have I taught you? And I thought: You…

— Miriam Toews

“Where are they going to get a camera? I asked. I don't know, said Noehmi. They'll probably get sidetracked along the way.…

— Miriam Toews

“The director said he's got a haunted soul and a natural sweetness.”

— Miriam Toews

“Nomi, he said, you just need to wake up to the fact that other people need to know where you're going. But…

— Miriam Toews

I would never want to deny my Mennonite background and culture; I'll always feel like and be identified as a Mennonite and…

— Miriam Toews

“When I opened up the bottle of wine, Thebes said whoa, you yanked that cork out of there like you were saving…

— Miriam Toews

The writing life is one long, never-ending search for narrative. Well, it's not even a conscious searching. It happens even while you're…

— Miriam Toews

“I think Ray might have wanted a son. One night when I was seven or eight I announced to my family that…

— Miriam Toews

The theme of sisters - of missing sisters, of needing sisters, the special love that sisters share or the antagonism sisters share…

— Miriam Toews

“..I followed her out the door and watched her walk down the road towards home, hers, and the bright yard light, and…

— Miriam Toews

“someday you’ll be gone, you’ll be dust, and then even less than dust. Nothing. There’s no other place to be. This world…

— Miriam Toews

...and I put on "All My Love" and watched the sun rise yet again and thought thank you Robert Plant for all…

— Miriam Toews

If, along the way, something is gained, then something will also be lost.

— Miriam Toews

Things shouldn't hinge on so very little. Sneeze and you're highway carnage. Remove one tiny stone and you're an avalanche statistic. But…

— Miriam Toews

I had a thought, on the way home from the rock field, that the things we don't know about a person are…

— Miriam Toews

Perhaps depression is caused by asking oneself too many unanswerable questions.

— Miriam Toews

The whole notion of pain, and how every individual experiences pain, is up for debate. We don't know how another person experiences…

— Miriam Toews

“...it was ludicrous to think that we could just talk our way out of shame, that shame was necessary, that it prevented…

— Miriam Toews

But whatever, we descendants of the Girl Line may not have wealth and proper windows in our drafty homes but at least…

— Miriam Toews

Conversing with children is a fine art.... An art form that demands large amounts of both honesty and misdirection. Or maybe discretion…

— Miriam Toews

I spent 18 years in a small Mennonite town in the middle of the Canadian prairies.

— Miriam Toews

“Later that evening I lay down in Min's empty bed upstairs and pulled her white sheet up over my head. I felt…

— Miriam Toews

“I couldn't see him but I could hear him snoring softly, humming, like a little airplane lost in the clouds.”

— Miriam Toews

“It may have been the light at 5:36 on a June evening or it may have been the smell of dust combined…

— Miriam Toews