We never respect those who amuse us, however we may smile at their comic powers.

Happiness consists not in having much, but in being content with little.

Superstition is only the fear of belief, while religion is the confidence.

Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious.

In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

Giving money effectively is almost as hard as earning it in the first place.

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly, literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel.

One by one I drowned all the people I’d been.

I grew up in the heat of '70s postmodern fiction and post-Godard films, and there was this idea that what mattered was the theory or meta in art.

Albertans have always worn their passions on their sleeves.

A standard of living is of the nature of habit. ...it acts almost solely to prevent recession from a scale of conspicuous expenditure that has once become habitual.

I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know.