Top 35 Quotes by Miriam Toews

I stare out the window and reflect on the similarity between writing and saving a life and the inevitable failure of one's imagination and one's goals and ambitions to create a character or a life worth saving.

With my father and sister being very depressed for most of their lives, it was incumbent on me to try to make them laugh, in this ridiculous way. They were the wittiest people I knew, but to get a smile from them was like winning the lottery.

The requests for blurbs seem to come in waves. I'm not sure what precipitates them. I think it must be excruciating for editors to draft those elaborate letters asking for a blurb, and I know it's torturous for us writers to ask directly. But publishers encourage us to. Rock and a hard place.

The writing life is one long, never-ending search for narrative. Well, it's not even a conscious searching. It happens even while you're busy buying groceries and when you're fast asleep. It's a curse.