"I relax completely when I'm at rest. I don't think of numbers; I don't think of work."

“He who has spent has used; he who has collected has lost; but he who has given has saved his treasure forever.”

“There's no way you can use water to collect waste in zero gravity. So, basically, our toilet on shuttle operations is a vacuum cleaner. The urinal looks like a Shop-Vac hose. It has different-shaped fronts on it for males and females to use. The urine is sucked down that hose and goes into a tank.”

“From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo”

“War is devastating, and it leaves its scars for generations.”

“I like to think that I am telling a story rather than writing it.”

Source : "A Lesson in the Art of Storytelling: An Interview with Alistair MacLeod". Interview with William Baer, quod.lib.umich.edu. 2005.

“Falling in love is not a choice. To stay in love is.”

“One of the founding moments of public health in the 19th century effectively poisoned the water supply of London much more effectively than any modern day bioterrorist could have ever dreamed of doing.”

“All solitary enjoyments, quickly fall, or become painful, so that, perhaps, no more insufferable misery can be conceived than that which must follow incommunicable privileges. Only imagine a human being condemned to perpetual youth while all around him decay and die. O, how sincerely would he call upon death for deliverance!”