Line By Line: Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries

"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..."

"At the edge of every experience is the refracted light of recollection snagged there like an image in a beveled mirror."

"It is inevitable that each of us will be misunderstood; this, it seems, is part of twentieth-century wisdom."

"It is frightening, and also exhilarating, her ability to deceive those around her; this is something new, her lost hours, her vivid dreams and shreds of language, as though she'd been given two lives instead of one, the alternate life cloaked in secret."

"He knows very well what underlies the compulsive side of his nature, it is the wish to escape that which he can't comprehend, seeking safety in an unbendable estrangement."