"I can't write. I'm too goddamned self-conscious."

"There was no literary climate in the Vancouver in the 1950s and 60s. We've come an unbelievably long way."

"Malcolm Lowry was a pain in the ass. He was so desperately being the Englishman out here, to show us how it's done."

"It was a dark and stormy night. That's the only time you can use 'it' without an antecedent."

"I liked Margaret Laurence. She had guts to the very end."