Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts? — Gabrielle Roy

"She too was standing in the lamp’s raw light. Her cheeks looked hollow, her lips too red, too bold."

"Florentine... Florentine Lacasse... half song, half squalor, half springtime, half misery,the young man murmured."

"...You and a lot of others like you wanted nothing more than a job and a bit of a salary just to keep the body and soul together. Instead of that you were doing, nothing and the rest of us who were making a dollar, well, we were paying for that. We paid to keep you doing nothing. In Canada, here, it got so the two-thirds of the population kept the other third idle!"

"Her shoulders sagging, her back hunched, her eyelids tired, Rose-Anna sewed for the feast, not daring even to sing for fear of frightening off her joy."

"They could see the rapids on their right. The swaying of the bus made her sick and weak, and her willpower was failing with her strength. She was afraid of falling into a torpor in which everything would become immaterial to her, and she tensed in an effort to seem gay and even attentive to Emmanuel."

"Because you’d be running after your own unhappiness."