St. Urbain's Horseman Quotes

“Jake recalled standing with Luke at the ship’s rail, afloat on champagne, euphoric, as Quebec City receded and they headed into the St. Lawrence and the sea. “I say! I say! I say!” Jake had demanded, “what’s beginning to happen in Toronto?” “Exciting things.” “And Montreal?” “It’s changing.” Tomorrow country then, tomorrow country now. And yet – and yet – he felt increasingly claimed by it, especially in the autumn, the Laurentian season, and the last time he had sailed the tranquil St. Lawrence into swells and the sea, it was with a sense of loss, even deprivation, and melancholy, that he had watched the clifftop towns drift past. Each one unknown to him. Circles completed, he thought.”
― Mordecai Richler, St. Urbain's Horseman

“When they tote up our contribution," Luke once said, "all that can be claimed for us is that we took 'fuck' out of the oral tradition and wrote it plain.”
― Mordecai Richler, St. Urbain's Horseman

“As nobody bothered to honor them, they very sensibly celebrated each other at fund-raising synagogue dinners, taking turns at being Man-of-the-Year, awarding each other ornate plates to hang over the bar in the rumpus room. Furthermore, God was interested in the fate of the Hershes, with time and consideration for each one. To pray was to be heard. There was not even death, only an interlude below ground. For one day, as Rabbi Polsky assured them, the Messiah would blow his horn, they would rise as one and return to Zion, buried with twigs in their coffins, as Baruch had once said, to dig their way to Him before the neighbors.”
― Mordecai Richler, St. Urbain's Horseman

“It wasn't, [Nancy] grasped, so much that he was a dirty little man as that he probably felt she was inaccessible to him and was therefore determined to find fault with her. Being a singularly lovely girl, she was in fact used the the type, having suffered considerably at their hands at university. And Jake, more than anything, reminded her of those insufferably bright boys on campus, self-declared intellectuals, usually Jewish, charged with bombast and abominable poetry in lower-case letters, who were aroused by her presence, and yet were too gauche (and terrified) to speak out and actually ask for a date. Instead they sat at the table next to her in the student union, aggressively calling attention to themselves. Speculating loudly on what they took to be her icy manner. Or they slid belligerently into the seat next to her at lectures, trying to bedazzle with their questions. They also ridiculed her to girls less happily endowed, wreaking vengeance for a rejection they anticipated, but were too cowardly to risk, and bandied suggestions about her secret sexual life sufficiently coarse to make her dry. No matter that she took immense pains not to be provocative, swimming in sloppy joe sweaters, sensible skirts, and flat shoes. Going out of her way to discourage boys the other girls coveted. For this only proved that Nancy Croft was remote; splendidly made, yest, but glacier-like.”
― Mordecai Richler, St. Urbain's Horseman