Marian Engel Quotes

#1. There's a kind of virgin one only becomes with difficulty.

Marian Engel

#2. Because what she disliked in men was not their eroticism, but their assumption that women had none. Which left women with nothing to be but housemaids.

Marian Engel

#3. the image of the Good Life long ago stamped on her soul was quite different from this, and she suffered in contrast.

Marian Engel

#4. There is a difference between art and life and that difference is readability.

Marian Engel

#5. She makes her little house to shine, she thought.

Marian Engel

#6. Happiness is a fragile thing, and alcohol, as I know from the house I grew up in, is dangerous to it.

Marian Engel

#7. All intellectual missionaries tend to lechery.

Marian Engel

#8. So this was her kingdom: an octagonal house, a roomful of books, and a bear.

Marian Engel

#9. I have tried and failed to lead a conventional life. When I try to be like other people, I fall out of bed.

Marian Engel

#10. Remember that it is not enough to have everything around you beautiful, remember that there must also be change and flux, because it is through change that we pretend that we can make decisions, and keep our pride, and go on pretending that both change and choice exist.

Marian Engel