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The recounting of a life is a cheat...even our own stories are obscenely distorted.

Carol Shields

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Carol Shields
Age: 68 †
Born: 1935
Born: June 2
Died: 2003
Died: July 16
Author
Biographer
Novelist
Poet
Short Story Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Oak Park
Illinois
Carol Warner
Carol Ann Warner
Carol Ann Shields
Recounting
Distorted
Cheat
Stories
Even
Life

More quotes by Carol Shields

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I couldn't have been a novelist without being a mother. It gives you a unique witness point of the growth of a personality. It was a kind of biological component for me that had to come first. My children gave this other window on the world.
Carol Shields
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A childhood is what anyone wants to remember of it. It leaves behind no fossils, except perhaps in fiction.
Carol Shields
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The larger loneliness of our lives evolves from our unwillingness to spend ourselves, stir ourselves. We are always damping down our inner weather, permitting ourselves the comforts of postponement, of rehearsals
Carol Shields
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Anyone's childhood can be an act of disablement if rehearsed and replayed and squinted at in a certain light. . .
Carol Shields
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Why should men be allowed to strut under the privilege of their life adventures, wearing them like a breast full of medals, while women went all gray and silent beneath the weight of theirs?
Carol Shields
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Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.
Carol Shields
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The scolding voice is her own, so abrasive and quick, yet so powerless to move her.
Carol Shields
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In a long and healthy life, which is what most of us have, there is plenty of time.
Carol Shields
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A woman's life isn't worth a plateful of cabbage if she hasn't felt life stir under her heart. Taking a little one to nurse, watching him grow to manhood, that's what love is.
Carol Shields
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It occurs to her that she should record this flash of insight in her journal - otherwise she is sure to forget, for she is someone who is always learning and forgetting and obliged to learn again.
Carol Shields
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I don't think I would have been a writer if I hadn't been a mother. I wanted to construct something that contained some of these feelings that I had, some of these discoveries or revelations.
Carol Shields
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Go for long walks, indulge in hot baths, Question your assumptions, be kind to yourself, live for the moment, loosen up, scream, curse the world, count your blessings, Just let go, Just be.
Carol Shields
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Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.
Carol Shields
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Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.
Carol Shields
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The silence is perfect, and yet a torment.
Carol Shields