quotes by Carol Shields

""I won't even mention the swift, transitory reward of lemon spray wax. Danielle Westerman and I have discussed the matter of housework. Not surprisingly, she, always looking a little dérisoire, believes that women have been enslaved by their possessions. Acquiring and then tending--these eat up a woman's creativity, anyone's creativity. But I've been watching the ways she arranges articles on a shelf, and how carefully she sets a table, even with it is just me coming into Toronto to have lunch in her sunroom."
— Carol Shields (Unless: A Novel)

"It's the arrangement of events which makes the stories. It's throwing away, compressing, underlining. Hindsight can give structure to anything, but you have to be able to see it. Breathing, waking and sleeping: our lives are steamed and shaped into stories. Knowing that is what keeps me from going insane, and though I don't like to admit it, sometimes it's the only thing."
— Carol Shields (Small Ceremonies)

"Nothing matters except for the harvest, the gathering in, the adding up, the bringing together, the whole story, the way it happens and happens and goes on happening.

(from "Collision")"
— Carol Shields (The Orange Fish)

"Eventually, everything gets stuck between a pair of parentheses or buried in the bottom of a trunk.

(from "Family Secrets")"
— Carol Shields (The Orange Fish)

"This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue."
— Carol Shields (Unless: A Novel)

"What I'd like is a lobotomy, a clean job, the top of my head neatly sawn off and designated contents removed."
— Carol Shields (Unless: A Novel)

"I won't even mention the swift, transitory reward of lemon spray wax. Danielle Westerman and I have discussed the matter of housework. Not surprisingly, she, always looking a little dérisoire, believes that women have been enslaved by their possessions. Acquiring and then tending--these eat up a woman's creativity, anyone's creativity. But I've been watching the ways he arranges articles on a shelf, and how carefully she sets a table, even with it is just me coming into Toronto to have lunch in her sunroom."
— Carol Shields (Unless: A Novel)

"Eventually, everything gets stuck between a pair of parentheses or buried in the bottom of a trunk."
— Carol Shields