No Great Mischief Quotes
"In the splendid autumn sunshine the bounty of the land is almost overwhelming, as if it is the manifestation of a poem by Keats."
"This land is not their own. Many of them are from the Caribbean and some are Mennonites from Mexico and some are French Canadians from New Brunswick and Quebec."
"Sometimes it is hard to choose or not to choose those things which bother us at the most inappropriate of times."
"In the more extreme seasons of summer and winter, there is always the 401. The 401, as most people hearing this will know, is Ontario’s major highway."
"Regardless of the route of entrance, the realization of the city of Toronto is always something of a surprise."
"In the grimy windows hand-lettered cardboard signs offer almost everything, it seems, at less than its true worth."
"Contrary to the myth, few of the people who live here are the owners of the stores beneath them."
"As long as I have something to hang on to, I am okay."
"The smell of burnt toast is often present, and sometimes jars of instant coffee or boxes of tea bags sit on windowsills or on archaic radiators beside packages of purchased cookies so laced with preservatives that they may sit there for months without any signs of change."
"I see Cape Breton, my love, far away o'er the sea."
"We will live a long, long time, if we are given the chance – and if we want to."
"It’s not easy, he says, having the police call him at home in the evenings, when he is watching television, to report disturbances."
"After they landed on the shores of Pictou, Calum Ruadh broke down and wept and he cried for two whole days."
"This is a story of lives which turned out differently than was intended."
"In the winter evenings my brothers would sit around their kitchen table bathed in the orange glow of their kerosene lamp, their gestures becoming exaggerated shadows thrown upon the walls."
"It makes it hard to keep an edge on the saws."
"We have a lot to be thankful for, even though we have had our losses."
"Some people never see their parents at all, and some men do not even know that they have children in the world."
"I bet you’d rather be married to me than to him?"
"Sometimes, as healing advances, small sharp splinters may work up through the tissue and be a source of discomfort and unexpected pain."
"It’s almost as if they want to. Only Quebec and the aboriginal population have statistics that are as bad."
"The life and death of each of us has its influence on others."
"Length of days is not what makes age honourable, nor number of years the true measure of life; Understanding, this is man’s grey hairs."
"And the sea gave up all the dead who were in it."
"If anything like that ever happens again, phone me directly. Phone me right away. I understand."
"Well, give me yours. Just tell me you’ll come with the same number of men. Give me a date."
"It is hard to know why, in such circumstances, we spoke Gaelic more and more."
"It was the language that God used when speaking to the angels."
"We could have won if the boats had come from France. We could have won if the rest of the country had joined with us."
"We are the lucky ones, the ones who went to Canada."
"When the sleigh stopped he assumed he was in the yard of the horses’ owner and leaped out of the sleigh and began unharnessing them."
"It is difficult for a man ever to give advice to his father. Even if you try to think of him as just another man he is still your father and you are his child, regardless of how old you have become."
"He might not approach life the same way I do," he said, "but as your grandma says, ‘He has a heart as big as the ocean.’ I believe that, and none of you should ever forget it."
"It’s a great thing, drinking beer. It cleans out your system and it comes out of you the same colour as it goes in."
"I think of the herring like the returning birds. That they came back regardless of what had happened to the people."
"Music is the lubricant of the poor. All over the world. In all the different languages."
"There are many things that people will do in the dark that they will not do in light."
"Perhaps the herring should have thought more."
"It seemed almost possible, however, to live a life based on 'person, place, and thing' plus action."
"The people of Glencoe believed that when the herring came they were led by a king."
"When they moved across the veldt, singing, people say the ground trembled under the impact of their bare feet."
"All good quarterbacks are like that. You never let your eyes betray what your mind is thinking."
"The sun continued its decline and then it was dusk."
"He was full of little double meanings like that, my husband."
"The clack of dogs’ nails are heard on the polished floor and two brown dogs enter the room."
"Sometimes I think dogs have more sense than half the people."
"We always sang when we were working and then we just sang because we liked to."
"The snow increases and the wind blows so that the officer has to hold on to his hat."
"‘Causeway Crossing’ by Albert MacDonald? Good song."
"No one said life was going to be a bed of roses."