Mowat Quotes

#1. We're under some gross misconception that we're a good species, going somewhere important, and that at the last minute we'll correct our errors and God will smile on us. It's delusion.

Farley Mowat

#2. I will take any liberty I want with facts as long as I don't trespass on the truth ... We confuse facts with truth.

Farley Mowat

#3. I have known Farley Mowat all of my life, from reading his books as a child to becoming a close friend of his over the last three decades.

Paul Watson

#4. I never let the facts get in the way of the truth!

Farley Mowat

#5. I write better in Cape Breton ... too many people around in Ontario. Down there I meet all sorts of non-human people, but they don't bother me, and I don't feel I have to apologize on behalf of my species quite so often.

Farley Mowat

#6. Don't let the facts interfere with the truth.

Farley Mowat

#7. I write every day. I'm always in the process of writing my last book, until the next one.

Farley Mowat

#8. Ah me son, we don't be takin' nothin' from the sea. We has to sneak up on what we wants and wiggle it away

Farley Mowat

#9. Don't make a big distinction between fiction and non-fiction. These are arbitrary distinctions ...

Farley Mowat

#10. Inaction will cause a man to sink into the slough of despond and vanish without a trace.

Farley Mowat

#11. The frozen fish were later put in deep holes in the moss and covered over to keep until they were needed.

Farley Mowat

#12. Jamie was quick to see a use for the ice sheet.

Farley Mowat

#13. I have to go on writing because I wouldn't be able to go on without writing. It is the only function that works for me, and without that function, I would die.

Farley Mowat

#14. Then he jumped up and shouted.

Farley Mowat

#15. If you are going to be a big personality, you've got to have some kind of characteristic gimmick.

Farley Mowat

#16. Mutt enjoyed traveling by car, but he was an unquiet passenger. He suffered from the delusion, common to dogs and small boys, that when he was looking out the right-hand side, he was probably missing something far more interesting on the left-hand side.

Farley Mowat

#17. the most blood thirsty animals in the Artic are not wolves, but the insatiable mosquitoes.

Farley Mowat

#18. I'll braid you one.

Farley Mowat

#19. It is in our nature to travel into our past, hoping thereby to illuminate the darkness that bedevils the present.

Farley Mowat

#20. Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. Every major world religion has this rule in common and a God they should love.

Darrell Mowat

#21. After all, we fought the Yanks in 1812 and kicked them the hell out of our country - but not with blanks.

Farley Mowat

#22. I believe in God the way my dog does

Farley Mowat

#23. The new plan looked like the answer.

Farley Mowat

#24. Stephen Harper is probably the most dangerous human being ever elevated to power in Canada.

Farley Mowat

#25. Truth I have no trouble with, it's the facts I get all screwed up.

Farley Mowat

#26. As the Siberian saying goes: One hundred versts (roughly a hundred miles) is no distance. A hundred rubles isn't worthwhile money. And a hundred grams of vodka just makes you thirsty.

Farley Mowat

#27. the free rights of men to destroy themselves through ignorance.

Farley Mowat

#28. And this is what happened, ands this is why the caribou and the wolf are one; for the caribou feeds the wolf, but it is the wolf that keeps the caribou strong.

Farley Mowat

#29. And so the pact of timelessness between us was broken and I went from him into the darkening tunnel of the years.

Farley Mowat

#30. Without a function, we cease to be. So, I will write till I die.

Farley Mowat

#31. The wolf never kills for fun, which is probably one of the main differences distinguishing him from man.

Farley Mowat

#32. You never know when the devil might come calling.

Farley Mowat

#33. I wonder now ... were my tears for Alex and Al and all the others who had gone and who were yet to go? Or was I weeping for myself ... and those who would remain?

Farley Mowat