Robertson Davies Quotes

"The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit. And that depends on your age, your experience, your psychological and spiritual need."

"Canada is not really a place where you are encouraged to have large spiritual adventures."

"Too much traffic with a quotation book begets a conviction of ignorance in a sensitive reader. Not only is there a mass of quotable stuff he never quotes, but an even vaster realm of which he has never heard."

"In my experience tact is usually worse than the brutalities of truth"

"The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."

"One of the most difficult tasks for the educated and sophisticated mind is to recognize that some clichés are also important truths"

"If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language."

"I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed - and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet."

"Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time."

"What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us."

"Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them."

"A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight."

"The love of truth lies at the root of much humor"

"Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision."

"Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it."

"For I was a collaborator with Destiny, not one who put a pistol to its head and demanded particular treasures"

"I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, ''I will tell you a story,'' and then he passes the hat."

"The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer."

"If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional and common sense continual."

"The people who fear humor - and there are many -are suspicious of its power to present things in unexpected lights to question received opinions and to suggest unforeseen possibilities"