16 Quotes by Sinclair Ross

Life has proved bitter and deceptive to Philip because of the artist in him, because he has kept seeking a beauty and significance that isn’t life’s to give; but Steve is a shrewd little realist, who, given opportunity to meet life on its own terms, ought to make a fair success of it.

It’s only since we’ve had Steve with us that I’ve realized how much of himself a man has to give before he’s really possessed. I used to think it was possession because we lived together as man and wife. I didn’t know how little it can amount to wanting a woman at night, putting up with her in the daytime.

He had been bewildered by it once, her caring for a dull-witted fellow like him; then assured at last of her affection he had relaxed against it gratefully, unsuspecting it might ever be less constant than his own.

For his presumption, his misunderstanding of what had been only a momentary weakness, instead of angering quickened her, roused from latency and long disuse all the instincts and resources of her femininity. She felt eager, challenged. Something was at hand that hitherto had always eluded her, even in the early days in John, something vital, beckoning, meaningful.

Or perhaps, the thought seized her, perhaps instead of his smile it was she who had changed. She who, in the long, wind-creaked silence, had emerged from the increment of codes and loyalties to her real, unfettered self. She who now felt his air of appraisal as nothing more than an understanding of the unfulfilled woman that until this moment had lain within her brooding and unadmitted, reproved out of consciousness by the insistence of an outgrown, routine fidelity.

It’s an immense night out there, wheeling and windy. The lights on the street and in the houses against the black wetness, little unilluminating glints that might be painted on it. The town seems huddled together, cowering on a high tiny perch, afraid to move lest it topple into the wind.

Ross’s style is always beautifully matched to his material – spare, lean, honest, no gimmicks, and yet in its very simplicity setting up continuing echoes of the mind. (Margaret Laurence's Afterword)

Sorry I didn’t do better,” he said. “I’ll have to come back another year and have another lesson.”I clenched my hands and clung hard to this promise that I knew he couldn’t keep. I wanted to rebel against what was happening, against the clumsiness and crudity of life, but instead I stood quiet a moment, almost passive, then wheeled away and carried his cornet to the buggy.(Cornet at Night)

What exactly she was thinking I never knew. Perhaps of the crop and the whole day’s stoking lost. Perhaps of the stranger who had come with his cornet for a day, and then as meaninglessly gone again. For she had been listening too, and she may have understood. A harvest, however lean, is certain every year; but a cornet at night is golden only once.(Cornet at Night)