Every Canadian has a complicated relationship with the United States, whereas Americans think of Canada as the place where the weather comes from.

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.

I am not mad because I'm a woman... I'm mad because you're an asshole.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer...an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.

Stick a shovel in the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light.

She stubs out her cigarette in the brown glass ashtray, then settles herself against him, ear to his chest. She likes to hear his voice this way, as if it begins not in his throat but in his body, like a hum or a growl, or like a voice speaking from deep underground. Like the blood moving through her own heart: a word, a word, a word.