Marian Engel > Quotes

“So this was her kingdom: an octagonal house, a roomful of books, and a bear.”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“Bear," she cried. "I love you. Pull my head off.”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“Remember that it is not enough to have everything around you beautiful, remember that there must also be change and flux, because it is through change that we pretend that we can make decisions, and keep our pride, and go on pretending that both change and choice exist.”
― Marian Engel, Sarah Bastard's Notebook

“Because what she disliked in men was not their eroticism, but their assumption that women had none. Which left women with nothing to be but housemaids.”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“She always attempted to be orderly, to catalogue her thoughts and feelings, so that when the awful, anarchic inner voice caught her out, her mind was stocked with efficacious replies. "What am I doing here?" could be answered with lists. She had another stock of replies to "Who the hell do you think you are, attempting to be alive?" She justified herself by saying that she was of service, that she ordered fragments of other lives.”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“She makes her little house to shine, she thought.”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“The Canadian tradition was, she had found, on the whole genteel. Any evidence that an ancestor had performed any acts other than working and praying was usually destroyed. Families handily became respectable in retrospect but it was...hell on history.”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“Fishwives. Fishwidows. And we all set out to be mermaids.”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“Where have I been? she wondered. Is a life that can now be considered an absence a life?

For some time things had been going badly for her. She could cite nothing in particular as a problem; rather, it was as if life in general had a grudge against her. Things persisted in turning grey. Although at first she had revelled in the erudite seclusion of her job, in the protection against the vulgarities of the world that it offered, after five years she now felt that in some way it had aged her disproportionately, that she was as old as the yellowed papers she spent her days unfolding. When, very occasionally, she raised her eyes from the past and surveyed the present, it faded from her view and became as ungraspable as a mirage. Although she had discussed this with the Director, who had waved away her condition of mind as an occupational hazard, she was still not satisfied that this was how the only life she had been offered should be lived.”
― Marian Engel

“the image of the Good Life long ago stamped on her soul was quite different from this, and she suffered in contrast.”
― Marian Engel

“There was something aggressive in her that always went too far. She had thrown a marcasite egg at her lover's window once, a green egg she particularly valued. She had stayed in this house too long. She had fucked the Director. She had let her breasts hang out before Homer. She had gone too far. No doubt if she had children she would neglect them”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“La gente se vuelve rara cuando pasa demasiado tiempo sola”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“The world was furred with late spring snow. It was the soft, thick stuff that excites you unless you are driving or half dead, packing snow already falling in caterpillars off the greening branches.”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“In the winter, she lived like a mole, buried deep in her office, digging among maps and manuscripts.”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“She was trying to decide to regard the black flies as a good symptom of the liveliness of the North, a sign that nature will never capitulate, that man is red in tooth and claw but there is something that cannot be controlled by him, when a critter no larger than a fruitfly tore a hunk out of her shin through her trousers.”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“Lou había acabado ejerciendo su profesión porque le encantaba leer. Cayó en la cuenta, mientras curioseaba por las grandes estanterías, de lo poco que leía ahora. Trabajaba sobre todo con papeles indescifrables y mapas sobrescritos. En lo que a libros concernía, solo se ocupaba de su exterior. Aquí tendría tiempo para leer”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“Nimiedades que servían para recordarle que antaño había existido el mundo exterior y que el presente era mucho más que el ayer y sus papeles amarillentos, su tinta parda y esos mapas que se desintegraban al desplegarlos.”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“Ze pakte het volgende boek, schudde ermee om te zien of er een briefje in zat en sloeg het open. Trelawny’s herinneringen aan Byron en Shelley.
Ze sloeg het open en begon te lezen (want het was geen heilig exemplaar, geen zeldzaamheid, maar gedateerd Londen, 1932). Trelawny? De man die het lichaam van Shelley had verbrand en het hart had bewaard. Ja, die Trelawny. De piraat. Een reus. Ging na de dood van Shelley met Byron naar Griekenland.”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“There was something aggressive in her that always went too far. She had thrown a marcasite egg at her lover's window once, a green egg she particularly valued. She had stayed in this house too long. She had fucked the Director. She had let her breasts hang out before Homer. She had gone too far. No doubt if she had children she would neglect them.”
― Marian Engel

“Sin embargo, no le parecía que los escritores ni quienes compraban esos libros conocieran a los animales. Ella tampoco los conocía en absoluto. Eran criaturas. No eran humanos. Suponía que sus funciones se definían por el tamaño, la forma y la complejidad de su cerebro. Suponía también que poseían tenues, vacilantes e inarticuladas vidas psíquicas”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“Lou entró, molesta por perturbar aquel silencio precioso y afelpado. Puso agua a hervir, arañando nerviosamente el cazo con el cucharón. Se vistió, consciente del chasquido de sus ropas. Se calzó los zapatos y oyó el roce de los cordones al atárselos. El cuchillo de la mantequilla rascó la tostada. Removió el café con una tintineante cuchara. No todo el mundo, pensó, está hecho para convivir con el silencio”
― Marian Engel, Bear

“Libro, libro. Cuando te pasen estas cosas, coge siempre un libro.”
― Marian Engel, Oso

“Un oso es más una isla que un hombre, pensó.”
― Marian Engel, Bear