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" No one expects the doormat to stand upright, shake itself off, and amble down the street to seek its own happiness. "

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" I still find the idea of a research-heavy or historical novel daunting. That's something I've had in mind for a while: like, would you research for a year and then start writing? I sit down, and I just don't know how to write it. "

" Anger is one of those emotions that doesn't follow the letter of the law. It speaks before it thinks. It rears up on its hind legs and charges. "

" I just have to trust that the story is going to shake out in such a way that's going to be palatable to readers. "

" Audience participation can often inject a dose of adrenalin into your average dial-tone literary reading, especially if a handful of audience-members are mentally unhinged, and let's face it - you can always depend on at least one crackpot at these things. "

" Guys know how to read each other's signals. They know how to telegraph love for one another without throwing their arms around one another. "

" A novelist's sense that he or she is 'above' a certain genre mainly comes out of the notion that the genre is somehow a debased version of his or her preferred form. "

" A dominant misconception among believers is that their atheist brethren are a slavering pack of hell-bound debauchees, gleefully wining and wenching their way through life while loudly professing their amorality. "

" Let's not confuse traditional behaviours with good manners. The definition of etiquette is gender neutral - it simply means we strive at all times to ensure a person in our company feels at ease. "

" One day it hit me: Truest friends, God bless their hearts, could not care less. They love you, they're pleased you're getting married and, ultimately, they don't give a fig how you get it done. "

" I think, as writers, our first responsibility is to writing an honest story. Tell the story you want to tell, without pulling your punches. "

" When you're not sure your anger is justified, the thing to do is ask yourself exactly where it's coming from. "

" When revising, consider whether you have written anything that will hurt or offend a member of your immediate family. If the answer is no, go back and add something. "

" We like long-form narrative journalism, and we feel there aren't enough high-profile outlets in Canada running the kind of stories we want to showcase - long, meaty, thoughtful, investigative. "

" The one thing I've always done as an author is talk to my publicists. Because they have all the best stories - and they have all the dirt on other, more famous and important writers. They're not supposed to talk about it, but sometimes you can get awesome little tidbits from them. "

" You can't hint a man into bestowing the ideal gift that displays all the love, appreciation and understanding you feel is lacking the rest of year. "

" What I've learned is that you get better at writing by writing, and that 'youthful energy' will only get you so far. "

" The process of writing a story isn't about fair. It's about getting to the heart of your story, getting to the truth of it. It transcends ideals of fair and unfair, right and wrong. "

" True adulthood occurs the moment we grasp that the people who raised us do not exist solely for our comfort and reassurance. From that point on, the steady stream of unconditional love and support we've expected from them all our lives has to flow both ways. "

" Atheism is a moral position - a rather rigid one, if you've ever read the opinions of its highest-profile espousers, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. "

" I spent so many years in terror of 'making it legal' because the expression rang all too true - the wedding ritual struck me as nothing but a flowery front for the fulfilment of countless, tedious contracts and obligations. "

" I would never have thought my collection of short stories would win the Giller. "

" A bunch of chairs lined up in front of a podium equals school. "

" I don't even like to cry in private. "

" That's what fascinates me about these writers' retreats: You're in these small spaces with small groups of people, and all of the sudden, the spotlight is shining on you harder than it normally is. "

" The fundamentals for me are character and conflict. I put character first because readers will be indifferent to conflict if they are indifferent to the character who is experiencing it. "

" You can't really go into TV thinking, 'Maybe I can make a few bucks doing this thing I'm only kind of interested in to support my one true love, which is prose fiction.' I think you have to love what you're doing to do it well. "

" It's a moral absolute: If you are going to make a human being, you have a fundamental responsibility to that person - to honestly disclose exactly who they are and where they come from. "

" As a novelist, you have to pick your battles. You are tired. You have begun to experience the first ominous tinglings of carpal tunnel syndrome. You wake up in the middle of the night with both hands lying across your chest like a couple of plucked bird carcasses, dead of all sensation. "

" I went into the world confident my tea training would open many doors. And I did particularly well with the Irish and fellow Nova Scotians over 60. But this only got me so far. It took a long time to cultivate the tricks of easy social interaction. "

" My dad was a real man's man, and so were my brothers, in a small town where hockey is king. It's a masculine culture. It made me really attentive to what it meant to be a guy. "