Terry Fallis > Quotes

“A life without challenge, a life without hardship, a life without purpose, seems pale and pointless. With challenge come perseverance and gumption. With hardship come resilience and resolve. With purpose come strength and understanding.”
― Terry Fallis, The High Road

“the use of profanity for effect to be a practice of the weak-minded”
― Terry Fallis, The Best Laid Plans

“one of the most famous split infinitives ... To boldly go”
― Terry Fallis, The Best Laid Plans

“nothing furnishes a room like books”
― Terry Fallis, The Best Laid Plans

“That night, I slept like a baby. In other words, I woke up every two hours or so and I cried for a while.”
― Terry Fallis, Albatross

“English should not stoop to embrace the lowest common denominator. Rather, society should step up and grant the language the respect it deserves.”
― Terry Fallis, The Best Laid Plans

“Being a feminist in principle is easy compared to being a feminist in practice. For men and women, living each day in practical defiance of thousands of years of gender-based streaming is so much harder than walking in marches, running workshops, and writing blog posts. It means questioning everything you do, moment by moment, day by day. It means thinking differently and making dozens of conscious decisions every day that you might have made on auto-pilot before. It's hard. It's taxing. It's tiring.”
― Terry Fallis, Poles Apart

“Writing seems the most solitary of pursuits, particularly late at night when you're clacking away on the laptop as your family sleeps. But eventually, it dawns on you that in fact, your ability to bind up your story into a book turns on the support of so many others. My thank-you list is long, and I'll be forever grateful to the family members, friends, and yes, to several strangers who helped me.”
― Terry Fallis, The Best Laid Plans

“there IS none”
― Terry Fallis, The Best Laid Plans

“I truly believed that a man should not be seen to be out front on feminism. That would be just like a man to try to take over the women's movement. We'd taken over everything else in history, in society, in the world, why not feminism, too? No, I don't think so.”
― Terry Fallis, Poles Apart

“We wonder why we're unable to attract to public life the calibre of people we'd like to see. Well, we pry into their private lives, put their every move under a microscope, and subject them and their loved ones to the most invasive and penetrating scrutiny imaginable. Then, when we find the slightest little thing that even remotely resembles an infraction no more serious than leaving the toilet seat up, we eat them. We get the government we deserve. Yes, we want honesty, transparency, and decency in our politicians. To attract such qualities, we need understanding, sensitivity, and sometimes forgiveness in our voters.”
― Terry Fallis, The Best Laid Plans

“Some people contend that the English language is a living, breathing organism wherein the definitions of words and rules should change to reflect their mass misuse. I contend that English is already an extraordinarily difficult language to teach. Monkeying with English to legitimize common errors would not make the language easier to learn and love. English should not stoop to embrace the lowest common denominator. Rather, society should step up and grant the language the respect it deserves.”
― Terry Fallis, The Best Laid Plans

“There was an expression on her face I've never seen before. The closest adjective I can come up with and it's still not right, is melancholy - a word that sounds kind of like what it means.”
― Terry Fallis