Literature Begins With The Possible Model Of

Our Country Has Shown A Lack Of Will To Resist Its Own Disintegration .. . Canada Is Practically The Only Country Left In The World Which Is A Pure Colony; Colonial In Psychology As Well As In Mercantile Economics.

It Seems To Me That Canadian Sensibility Has Been Profoundly Disturbed, Not So Much By Our Famous Problem Of Identity, Important As That Is, As By A Series Of Paradoxes In What Confronts That Identity. It Is Less Perplexed By The Question "who Am I?" Than By Some Such Riddle As "where Is Here?

Poetry Can Only Be Made Out Of Other Poems; Novels Out Of Other Novels.

Nobody Is Capable Of Of Free Speech Unless He Knows How To Use Language, And Such Knowledge Is Not A Gift: It Has To Learned And Worked At.

One Of The Most Obvious Uses Of Literature, I Think, Is Its Encouragement Of Tolerance... Bigots And Fanatics Seldom Have Any Use For The Arts, Because They're So Preoccupied With Their Beliefs And Actions That They Can't See Them Also As Possibilities.