Carol Shields
Carol Shields
Carol Ann Shields, CC OM FRSCwas an American-born Canadian novelist and short story writer. She is best known for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award in Canada...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 June 1935
CountryCanada
mother thinking discovery
I don't think I would have been a writer if I hadn't been a mother. I wanted to construct something that contained some of these feelings that I had, some of these discoveries or revelations.
mother children unique
I couldn't have been a novelist without being a mother. It gives you a unique witness point of the growth of a personality. It was a kind of biological component for me that had to come first. My children gave this other window on the world.
long healthy healthy-life
In a long and healthy life, which is what most of us have, there is plenty of time.
thinking use language
Words are our life. We are human because we use language. So I think we are less human when we use less language.
light movement said
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
morning powerful fall
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.
novel monologues i-can
This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.
book writing want
Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.
book reading moving
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.
letting-go blessing long-walks
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.
moving voice scolding
The scolding voice is her own, so abrasive and quick, yet so powerless to move her.
thinking long people
Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.
hands knowing want
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.
chapters self-discovery
There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.