"She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes."

"He ran as fast as he could, but the memories were fast too. He stumbled upon them and fell to the ground. The memories got up and stared into his eyes menacingly, they laughed harder and kept their foot on his neck. He choked and fought to breathe. He tried and failed to scream. They choked him hard until he suffered and died miserably inside."

"He closed the pages and stuffed them back into his jacket. Keeping his eyes cast downwards as he sipped his wine, he pulled out and lit a cigarette – almost a post-coital gesture. From The Willow Lake Group by Kelly Proudfoot."

"My feelings about my mortality are less selfish than they used to be. I used to affect a cavalier attitude to death now I see it from my son's perspective."

"Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency."

"You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have claims on man and to the man with special talents this is a very special claim. It is required that a man take part in the actions and clashes of his time than the peril of being judged not to have lived at all."