38 Quotes by Mavis Gallant

If your life isn't exactly the way you want it to be by the time you are forty-five," said Walter's father, whom he admired, "not much point in continuing. You might as well hang yourself.

She was a pretty girl, with a pointed face and blue-black hair. But she was an untidy, a dusty sort of girl, and you felt that in a few years something might go wrong; she might get swollen ankles or grow a mustache.

She could have lived in comfort, but I doubt if it occurred to her to try.

No one is as real to me as people in the novel. It grows like a living thing. When I realize they do not exist except in my mind I have a feeling of sadness, looking around for them, as if the half-empty cafe were a place I had once come to with friends who had all moved away.

She and Marie were Montreal girls, not trained to accompany heroes, or to hold out for dreams, but just to be patient.

Spring had been the season for dying in the old days. Invalids who had struggled through the dark comfort of winter took fright as the night receded.

La verdadera vida de Carmela acababa de comenzar y ella no tenía dudas de lo que eso comportaba. Permanecería muda y expectante entre los poderosos y los extraños. Nadaría como un pececillo y aprendería a respirar bajo el agua.

It happened that at the late age of twenty-seven I had run away from home. High time, you might say; but rebels can't always be choosers.

If you listen at doors, you hear what you deserve.