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Top 25 Mavis Gallant Quotes (2025 Update)

Mavis Gallant Quote: “A short story is what you see when you look out of the window.”

1. “A short story is what you see when you look out of the window.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “All lives are interesting; no one life is more interesting than another. Its fascination depends on how much is revealed, and in what manner.”

2. “All lives are interesting; no one life is more interesting than another. Its fascination depends on how much is revealed, and in what manner.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “No one is as real to me as people in the novel. It grows like a living thing. When I realize they do not exist except in my mind I have a feeling of sadness, looking around for them, as if the half-empty cafe were a place I had once come to with friends who had all moved away.”

3. “No one is as real to me as people in the novel. It grows like a living thing. When I realize they do not exist except in my mind I have a feeling of sadness, looking around for them, as if the half-empty cafe were a place I had once come to with friends who had all moved away.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “I write every day as a matter of course It is not a burden. It is the way I live.”

4. “I write every day as a matter of course It is not a burden. It is the way I live.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “All immigration is based on misapprehension.”

5. “All immigration is based on misapprehension.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “A writer’s life stands in relation to his work as a house does to a garden, related but distinct.”

6. “A writer’s life stands in relation to his work as a house does to a garden, related but distinct.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “Success can only be measured in terms of distance traveled...”

7. “Success can only be measured in terms of distance traveled...”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “If you listen at doors, you hear what you deserve.”

8. “If you listen at doors, you hear what you deserve.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “Like every other form of art, literature is no more and nothing less than a matter of life and death. The only question worth asking about a story – or a poem, or a piece of sculpture, or a new concert hall – is, Is it dead or alive?”

9. “Like every other form of art, literature is no more and nothing less than a matter of life and death. The only question worth asking about a story – or a poem, or a piece of sculpture, or a new concert hall – is, Is it dead or alive?”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “I wanted to live in Paris and write nothing but fiction and be perfectly free. I had decided all this had to be settled by the time I was thirty, and so I gave up my job and moved to Paris at twenty-eight. I just held my breath and jumped. I didn’t even look to see if there was water in the pool.”

10. “I wanted to live in Paris and write nothing but fiction and be perfectly free. I had decided all this had to be settled by the time I was thirty, and so I gave up my job and moved to Paris at twenty-eight. I just held my breath and jumped. I didn’t even look to see if there was water in the pool.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “There are a great many opinions in this world, and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble.”

11. “There are a great many opinions in this world, and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “She and Marie were Montreal girls, not trained to accompany heroes, or to hold out for dreams, but just to be patient.”

12. “She and Marie were Montreal girls, not trained to accompany heroes, or to hold out for dreams, but just to be patient.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “Writing is like a love affair: the beginning is the best part.”

13. “Writing is like a love affair: the beginning is the best part.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “I began to ration my writing, for fear I would dream through life as my father had done. I was afraid I had inherited a poisoned gene from him, a vocation without a gift.”

14. “I began to ration my writing, for fear I would dream through life as my father had done. I was afraid I had inherited a poisoned gene from him, a vocation without a gift.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “I believed that if I was to call myself a writer, I should live on writing. If I could not live on it, even simply, I should destroy every scrap, every trace, every notebook and live some other way.”

15. “I believed that if I was to call myself a writer, I should live on writing. If I could not live on it, even simply, I should destroy every scrap, every trace, every notebook and live some other way.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “There is a term for people caught on a street crossing after the light has changed: “pedestrian-traffic residue”.”

16. “There is a term for people caught on a street crossing after the light has changed: “pedestrian-traffic residue”.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “The older I get the more grateful I am not to be told how everything comes out.”

17. “The older I get the more grateful I am not to be told how everything comes out.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “Like his father, like Jules Renard, he had been carried along the slow, steady swindle of history and experience.”

18. “Like his father, like Jules Renard, he had been carried along the slow, steady swindle of history and experience.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “Against the sustained tick of a watch, fiction takes the measure of a life, a season, a look exchanged, the turning point, desire as brief as a dream, the grief and terror that after childhood we cease to express.”

19. “Against the sustained tick of a watch, fiction takes the measure of a life, a season, a look exchanged, the turning point, desire as brief as a dream, the grief and terror that after childhood we cease to express.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “Decide what the rest of your life is to be. Whatever you are now, you might be forever.”

20. “Decide what the rest of your life is to be. Whatever you are now, you might be forever.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “My mother has lived every day of her life as if it were preparation for some kind of crisis.”

21. “My mother has lived every day of her life as if it were preparation for some kind of crisis.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait.”

22. “Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “Spring had been the season for dying in the old days. Invalids who had struggled through the dark comfort of winter took fright as the night receded.”

23. “Spring had been the season for dying in the old days. Invalids who had struggled through the dark comfort of winter took fright as the night receded.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “It happened that at the late age of twenty-seven I had run away from home. High time, you might say; but rebels can’t always be choosers.”

24. “It happened that at the late age of twenty-seven I had run away from home. High time, you might say; but rebels can’t always be choosers.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “Converts have it soft,” said Mary. “They come to it late, without ever having had the Devil under the bed. They sail in and admire the stained-glass windows. All the dirty work has been done.”

25. “Converts have it soft,” said Mary. “They come to it late, without ever having had the Devil under the bed. They sail in and admire the stained-glass windows. All the dirty work has been done.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “When workers are asked, in interviews, what they think of the students, they invariably refer to them as “our future bosses,” and say they hope this experience will make better chefs of them than their fathers have been. French Revolution all for nothing?”

26. “When workers are asked, in interviews, what they think of the students, they invariably refer to them as “our future bosses,” and say they hope this experience will make better chefs of them than their fathers have been. French Revolution all for nothing?”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “She could have lived in comfort, but I doubt if it occurred to her to try.”

27. “She could have lived in comfort, but I doubt if it occurred to her to try.”

— Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Quote: “If your life isn’t exactly the way you want it to be by the time you are forty-five,” said Walter’s father, whom he admired, “not much point in continuing. You might as well hang yourself.”

28. “If your life isn’t exactly the way you want it to be by the time you are forty-five,” said Walter’s father, whom he admired, “not much point in continuing. You might as well hang yourself.”

— Mavis Gallant

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