Quotes from The Best Laid Plans

Terry Fallis ·  314 pages

Rating: (8.3K votes)


“the use of profanity for effect to be a practice of the weak-minded”
― Terry Fallis, quote from The Best Laid Plans


“one of the most famous split infinitives ... To boldly go”
― Terry Fallis, quote from The Best Laid Plans


“nothing furnishes a room like books”
― Terry Fallis, quote from The Best Laid Plans


“English should not stoop to embrace the lowest common denominator. Rather, society should step up and grant the language the respect it deserves.”
― Terry Fallis, quote from The Best Laid Plans


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About the author

Terry Fallis
Born place: in Toronto, Canada
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Popular quotes

“The world is divided between kids who grow up wanting to be their parents and those like us, who grow up wanting to be anything but. Neither group ever succeeds.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man


“Don't knock finding nemo," Xavier teased, taking the DVD from my grasp. "It's a modern classic."
"Is it seriously about fish?"
"Yeah, but really cool fish.”
― Alexandra Adornetto, quote from Heaven


“Truth for anyone is a very complex thing. For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include. What lies beyond the margin of the text? The photographer frames the shot; writers frame their world. Mrs Winterson objected to what I had put in, but it seemed to me that what I had left out was the story’s silent twin. There are so many things that we can’t say, because they are too painful. We hope that the things we can say will soothe the rest, or appease it in some way. Stories are compensatory. The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control. When we tell a story we exercise control, but in such a way as to leave a gap, an opening. It is a version, but never the final one. And perhaps we hope that the silences will be heard by someone else, and the story can continue, can be retold. When we write we offer the silence as much as the story. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken. Mrs Winterson would have preferred it if I had been silent.

Do you remember the story of Philomel who is raped and then has her tongue ripped out by the rapist so that she can never tell? I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?


“How can a man’s candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind—impetuous, arm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian.”
― George Eliot, quote from Adam Bede


“It’s easy to be yourself in the dark.”
― Marisha Pessl, quote from Night Film


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