Robertson Davies Quotes

Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books.

All real fantasy is serious. Only faked fantasy is not serious. That is why it is so wrong to impose faked fantasy on children....

But what I knew then was that nobody-- not even my mother-- was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself on the surface.

He [Jesus] had a terrible temper, you know, undoubtedly inherited from His Father.

I seemed to be the only person I knew without a plan that would put the world on its feet and wipe the tear from every eye. No wonder I felt like a stranger in my own land.

You are certainly unique. Everyone is unique. Nobody has ever suffered quite like you before because nobody has ever been you before.

Wake up! Be yourself, not a bad copy of something else!

Never neglect the charms of narrative for the human heart.

You'll go far. How do I know? Because life is goosing you so hard you'll never stop climbing.

I shall be as brief as I can, for it is not by piling up detail that I hope to achieve my picture, but by putting the emphasis where I think it belongs.

I was a talking lover, which most women hate.

Canada was settled in the main by people with a lower middle-class outlook and a respect rather than an affectionate familiarity for the things of the mind.

Whether you are really right or not doesn't matter it's the belief that counts.

The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights actors and audiences - a figure dreaded and occasionally comic but never welcome never loved.

If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow-creatures let him begin the long solitary task of perfecting himself.

The love of truth lies at the root of much humour.

As a general thing people marry most happily with their own kind. The trouble lies in the fact that people usually marry at an age when they do not really know what their own kind is.

If we seek the pleasures of love passion should be occasional and common sense continual.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is in fact a return to the idealized past.

I do not 'get' ideas ideas get me.