“ With my father and sister being very depressed for most of their lives, it was incumbent on me to try to make them laugh, in this ridiculous way. They were the wittiest people I knew, but to get a smi… Miriam Toews
“ And what have you been up to? she asked.Oh, I don't know really, I said. Not much. Learning how to be a good loser. Miriam Toews
“ Can’t you just be like the rest of us, normal and sad and fucked up and alive and remorseful? Miriam Toews
“ We drove down Corydon avenue towards my mother's apartment. How are you doing, she asked me? Fine, fine, I said. I wanted to tell her that I felt I was dying from rage and that I felt guilty about eve… Miriam Toews
“ I was beginning to understand something I couldn't articulate. It was a jazzy feeling in my chest, a fluttering, a kind of buzzing in my brain. Warmth. Life. The circulation of blood. Sanguinity. I do… Miriam Toews
“ You've finally written it? That's great! She asked me if I'd read to her from it and I said no. Just a paragraph? No. A sentence? No. Half a sentence! One word? No. A letter? I said okay, that I would… Miriam Toews
“ I stare out the window and reflect on the similarity between writing and saving a life and the inevitable failure of one's imagination and one's goals and ambitions to create a character or a life wor… Miriam Toews
“ Perhaps all of us are crazy, Ona says. Of course we're all crazy, says Mejal. How can we not be? Miriam Toews
“ I don’t know now why I let her believe otherwise, but someday, perhaps, it will be clear. Miriam Toews
“ Even a Menno sheltered from the world knows not to stick her tongue into the mouth of a boy who owns an Air Supply record. You might stick your tongue into the mouth of a boy who owned some Emerson, L… Miriam Toews
“ When I opened up the bottle of wine, Thebes said whoa, you yanked that cork out of there like you were saving it from drowning. She got out her markers and drew a screaming face on the cork. Miriam Toews
“ We are not members, . . . we are commodities. . . . When our men have used us up so that we look sixty when we’re thirty and our wombs have literally dropped out of our bodies onto our spotless kitche… Miriam Toews
“ The twin pillars that guard the entrance to the shrine of religion are storytelling and cruelty. Miriam Toews
“ Imagine a psychiatrist sitting down with a broken human being saying, I am here for you, I am committed to your care, I want to make you feel better, I want to return your joy to you, I don't know how… Miriam Toews
“ Our dreams are little stories or puzzles that we must solve to be free, Sebastian said. He was reading out loud from Wilson's notebook. My dream is me offering me a solution to the conundrum of my lif… Miriam Toews
