Things shouldn't hinge on so very little. Sneeze and you're highway carnage. Remove one tiny stone and you're an avalanche statistic. But I guess if you can die without ever understanding how it happened then you can also live without a complete understanding of how. And in a way that's kind of relaxing.

Miriam Toews

Categorized in : Life Stones Understanding

Is it wrong to trust in a beautiful lie if it helps you get through life?

Miriam Toews

helping beautiful lying

I learned another thing, which is that just because someone is eating the ashes of your protagonist doesn't mean you stop telling the story.

Miriam Toews

ashes stories mean

Conversing with children is a fine art.... An art form that demands large amounts of both honesty and misdirection. Or maybe discretion is a better word.

Miriam Toews

honesty children art

I had a thought, on the way home from the rock field, that the things we don't know about a person are the things that make them human, and it made me feel sad to think that, but sad in that reassuring way that some sadness has, a sadness that says welcome home in twelve different languages.

Miriam Toews

sadness home thinking

Her faith in a loving and forgiving God is strong, but she worships laughter.

Miriam Toews

forgiving-god laughter strong

It’s hard to grieve in a town where everything that happens is God’s will. It’s hard to know what to do with your emptiness when you’re not supposed to have emptiness.

Miriam Toews

emptiness towns grieving

It's raining questions around here. A person could drown in them.

Miriam Toews

persons rain

There are no windows within the dark house of depression through which to see others, only mirrors.

Miriam Toews

mirrors dark depression

She was becoming sad. There is no joy involved in following others' expectations of yourself

Miriam Toews

becoming expectations joy

But love, like a mushroom high compared with the buzz from cheap weed, outlasts grief.

Miriam Toews

weed mushrooms grief

It was the first time that we had sort of articulated our major problem. She wanted to die and I wanted her to live and we were enemies who loved each other.

Miriam Toews

problem enemy firsts

I love road trips. You get into this Zen rhythm; throw sense of time out the window.

Miriam Toews

road-trip rhythm window

A few weeks ago my uncle came over to borrow my dad's socket set and when he asked my dad how he was my dad said oh unexceptional. Living quietly with my disappointments. And how are you

Miriam Toews

uncles dad disappointment

Even a Menno sheltered from the world knows not to stick her tongue into the mouth of a boy who owns an Air Supply record. You might stick your tongue into the mouth of a boy who owned some Emerson, Lake and Palmer, but you would not date him on a regular basis, or openly.

Miriam Toews

air lakes boys

After that we tried thirty-nine times to stand together on the tube until we finally did. It was fun. I liked the falling part, and holding hangs. Relationships were so easy when all you had to work on was standing up together.

Miriam Toews

together fun fall

But whatever, we descendants of the Girl Line may not have wealth and proper windows in our drafty homes but at least we have rage and we will build empires with that, gentlemen.

Miriam Toews

gentleman girl home

We Poor Cousins don’t care at all though, except for when we’re on welfare, broke, starving, unable to buy cool high-tops for our children or pay for their university tuition or purchase massive fourth homes on private islands with helicopter landing pads. But whatever, we descendants of the Girl Line may not have wealth and proper windows in our drafty homes but at least we have rage and we will build empires with that, gentlemen.

Miriam Toews

cousin girl children

If, along the way, something is gained, then something will also be lost.

Miriam Toews

ifs lost way

David Bergen is a master of taut, spare prose that's both erotic and hypnotic. . . .

Miriam Toews

prose erotic masters

If you have to end up in the hospital, try to focus all your pain in your heart rather than your head.

Miriam Toews

pain focus heart