Gabrielle Roy Quotes

He [Jean] still felt surges of generosity, and gave in to them if they didn’t cramp his style. That was it. He could be kind if kindness caused him no problems.

..."Would you wait for me?" he asked suddenly, his voice husky and low. "it's not right, but would you wait? Would you you wait till the world is cured again? A year? Two years? Maybe longer! Could you give me all that time, Florentine?" She pulled back from him, wary of his words. What did he mean? "Till the world cured..." What kind of talk was that? She was fearful of what she didn't understand, but felt at that moment she felt their destinies in her hand...

Rose-Anna was tugging at the edge of her apron with a tired, futile gesture she had never made in the past – the grandmother’s gesture.

Her shoulders sagging, her back hunched, her eyelids tired, Rose-Anna sewed for the feast, not daring even to sing for fear of frightening off her joy.

To make war, you had to be filled with love, with a vehement passion, exalted, intoxicated, otherwise the whole thing was inhuman and absurd.

She too was standing in the lamp’s raw light. Her cheeks looked hollow, her lips too red, too bold.

Where could you find a light to guide the world?

"Don’t preach," said Florentine violently. She was beginning to see the maze of lies and deceptions that lay before her.

Running anywhere, blindly, hating the echo of her footsteps in the silence of the empty streets, Florentine fled from her own fear, fled from herself.

Finally anger took possession of him. It was his turn to ask the question already raised by so many others: We, down there, the ones who join up, we're giving everything we have to give, maybe our arms and our two legs. He looked up at the high grills, the curving driveways, the sumptuous facades, and completed his thought: Are these people giving all they have to give?

It began to rain harder. The last snow was under attack by these heavy, wide-spaced drops. All that remained underfoot of months of frost and freezing was a light crust that crumbled as he walked. The sidewalk was soon completely washed by this slow, tenacious rain. Its smooth, shining surface reflected the midnight lights and tangles of naked branches.

He saw a tree in a backyard, its branches tortured among electric wires and clotheslines, its leaves dry and shriveled before they were fully out. Low in the sky, dark clouds heralded the storm.

Home! That was an old word, one of the first the children had ever learned. You used it without thinking, a hundred times a day. It had meant so many different things!..Home was an elastic word and even meaningless at times....

The more the heart is sated with joy, the more it becomes insatiable.

They could see the rapids on their right. The swaying of the bus made her sick and weak, and her willpower was failing with her strength. She was afraid of falling into a torpor in which everything would become immaterial to her, and she tensed in an effort to seem gay and even attentive to Emmanuel.