89 Quotes by Carol Shields

We are too kind, too willing--too unwilling too--reaching out blindly with a grasping hand but not knowing how to ask for what we don't even know we want.

There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.

The scolding voice is her own, so abrasive and quick, yet so powerless to move her.

nothing she did or said was quite what she meant but still her life could be called a monument shaped in a slant of available light and set to the movement of possible music

Go for long walks, indulge in hot baths, Question your assumptions, be kind to yourself, live for the moment, loosen up, scream, curse the world, count your blessings, Just let go, Just be.

In one day I had altered my life; my life, therefore, was alterable. This simple axiom did not call out for exegesis; no, it entered my bloodstream directly, as powerful as heroin. I could feel it pump and surge, the way it brightened my veins to a kind of glass. I had wakened that morning to narrowness and predestination and now I was falling asleep in the storm of my own free will.

Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.

Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.

This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.