Quotes by Mavis Gallant

“She had the loaded handbag of someone who camps out and seldom goes home, or who imagines life must be full of emergencies.”

“I was the first woman to burn my bra - it took the fire department four days to put it out.”

“Oh, woman, woman! When to ill thy mind is bent, all Hell contains no fouler fiend”

“I began to ration my writing, for fear I would dream through life as my father had done. I was afraid I had inherited a poisoned gene from him, a vocation without a gift.”

“[My father] had spent his own short time like a priest in charge of a relic, forever expecting the blessed blood to liquefy.”

“The first flash of fiction arrives without words. It consists of a fixed image like a slide or closer still a freeze frame showing characters in a simple situation....”

On Maries eight visit, Raymond met her at the airport with a skinny woman he said was his wife. She had dark-blond hair and one of those unset permanents, all corkscrews. Marie looked at her, and looked away. Raymond explained that he had moved back to Hollywood North. Marie said she didnt care, as long as she had somewhere to lay her head.They left the terminal in silence. Outside, she said, Whats this car? Japanese? Your father liked a Buick.It belongs to Mimi, he said.Marie got in front, next to Raymond, and the skinny woman climbed in behind. Marie said to Raymond, in French, You havent told me her name.Well, I have, of course. I introduced you. Mimi.Mimi isnt a name.Its hers, he said.It cant be. Its always short for something - for Michele. Did you ever hear of a Saint Mimi? Shes not a divorced woman, is she? You were married in church?In a kind of church, he said. She belongs to a Christian movement.Marie knew what that meant: pagan rites.

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.

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.

There are a great many opinions in this world and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble.