Editors From Canada

"I think one of the problems that happens with representations of — well, I’ll say with Mexicans, but in general with Latin Americans — is that we only get one type of story told. In general, the type of story that you get if you’re Latin American and you’re reading something in the English language — because it’s different if you’re reading Spanish fiction — you don’t get any genre fiction at all. The stories that you can tell are very limited. Normally they limit you to the suffering illegal immigrant."

"Growing up in Mexico, we didn't have a dividing line between the fantastical and the literary, like you do in Canada, so it bled through. Therefore, my writing bleeds through categories and I enjoy the challenge of changing constantly, like molting out of a book."

"It is easy to prime the pump and have the words gush forth in a torrent of pious phrases but the proof of what we really want – regardless of what we say we want – is evident in the way we live."

"You are born with two things: existence and opportunity, and these are the raw materials out of which you can make a successful life."

"There's a place between desire and memory, some back porch we can neither wish nor recall"

"The meditative approach acknowledges that one moment will inevitably lead on to the next. We accept immortality instead of fighting it off."

"Before the wonderful, terrible wrestling with words and music there is the state of mind I'm calling 'poetic attention' ... a sort of readiness ... a form of knowing."

"We inflict our rage for immortality on things, marooning them on static islands."

"Phenomenology is one name for the path back from the object to the thing, the counterbalance to the objectification or 'progress'.Poetry is another."

"As I grew older the poetic surround becomes more important. I realize that the 'poetic attention' was more important to me than poetry was. The 'poetic attention' being a kind of longing without the desire to possess."

"McKay's meditations on times evidence acquire a similar heft, proposing, in their discipline of mind and generosity of spirit, a way to be at home in the world."

"The nature poet may (should in fact ), resort to the field guide or library but will keep coming back , figuratively speaking, to the trail - to the grain of experience."

"Poets are supremely interested in what language can't do , in order to gesture outside, they use language in a way that flirts with its destruction."

"The first indication of one's status as a nature poet is that one does not invoke language right off when talking about poetry."

"Essay -Baler Twine"

"Admitting you are a nature poet, nowadays, may make you seem something of a fool!"

"The panic over public health care is funny and sad, since America has had death panels and sinister bureaucrats for years. They're called Aetna, Humana, and Wellpoint, they make a killing, figuratively and literally."

"If there is no more market for ancient Greek, there should be no more ancient Greek. If there are no jobs for historians, there should be no history. If there is no money in brains, there should be no brains - except for the brains that make money."

"Bankers grovelled before the governments they usually revile, like wispy poets whining for grant money. They got billions in bailouts, yet somehow the financial sector still inspires more trust and respect than the government that saved it from itself."

"All we really need to do is learn 'em so they don't frig up the cash register or offend the customers."

"We are not the adults in the sense that Kant intended, but adolescents. This is a problem, because we are the world's most heavily armed teenagers."

"Who teh heLL R u 2 tELL me what 2 reed or how 2 spel?"

"It's a shame that pantyless party girls get more attention than the real heroes, the nurses and teachers and moms."

"Anyone taking classics or history for the prestige is either at Oxford or stuck in 1909."

"Nerds do not think they are better than you. Nerds are better than you, in their particular fields, unless you happen to be an even more devoted nerd."

"Why clog your head with tedious facts about the past when you can simply demand an exam review sheet or consult Google or Wikipedia?"

"When we valorize ignorance and debase reason, we diminish man and the humanity that dwells within him, to bum an old fashioned phrase from Kant."

""You think you're so smart" is never a compliment; the only thing worse than being smart is thinking that you are."

"Laughing at the clueless mouthfarts of cute twenty somethings who spent their high-school years with vocal coaches or plastic surgeons is another variation on the theme "Are we getting dumber?""

"Posthumous fame, book fame, nerd fame is not like the good kind of fame. It might last for centuries and let antique egg heads torture the young from the grave, but it just doesn't pay the bills."

"I can sculpt a birthday cake out of shit and insist that I obviously mean cake, that my real intent is to wish you a happy birthday, but my intentions and protestations cannot turn crap into a delicious dessert."

"The humanities are despised because they are dangerous. They arm us with the intellectual weapons we need to fight the forces of ignorance and idiocracy, and to free ourselves from freedumb."

"Rozema has established herself as an exceptional and distinctly sensual visual stylist. Her films are characterized by self-referential narration, idiosyncratic protagonists (who are often struggling artists), formal adventurousness, and the use of fairy tales, mythology, and poetry as structuring notions."

"In 2000, in honour of the 25th anniversary of the Toronto International Film Festival, 10 preeminent Canadian filmmakers were asked to create short films. Staying true to her thematic preoccupation with artists, audiences and their relationship, Rozema's contribution was This Might Be Good, a six-minute wordless, experimental piece about hope — the hope of audiences, actors and filmmakers who gather around films at festivals."

"You cannot underestimate what a radical thing it is to change from one art form to another. An author slaves to start with just the right word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph. The sounds of the words are crucial. But all the demands of words and prose are lifted when you make a movie. The physical presence makes many unnecessary and some necessary ones impossible. So you serve two masters as an adapting filmmaker: the author's intention and the needs of film. Sometimes "fidelity" can mean only focusing on one day of a story told over twenty years in a book."

"Maybe it's the remnants of my religious upbringing, but I do try and insert a sense of social justice into the work … for instance, to me, Mansfield Park is a story about servitude and slavery. Other people may have a problem with that, but that's how I read the book and so that's how I shot the movie."

"I wanted [Martin] to be a really decent human being because I didn't want to depict the cliché that a woman becomes a lesbian because her husband is terrible to her."

"I have become post facto a representative of the country. So if you ask, "Is Mermaids a Canadian film?" — it has become one. It has become a means whereby people characterize Canadian film. I think in the creation of Mermaids, I did see it in political terms. I thought of the underdog. Canada is not a superpower by any means. It's very quietly, comfortably democratic, but it's plagued by a sense of inferiority."

"Our voices, our representation of ourselves, have been in the hands of others, namely men, since the beginning of the mediums of film and television. My main character in I've Heard the Mermaids Singing videotaped a confession that is used through the film. It's her way of having control over her definition of herself."

"I believe in tension and release, in that if you stay in the the same tone and mode and intensity for too long, it actually becomes monotonous. When you change up your pace or your humour level, then the release is welcome. … I believe that's my biggest job: tone control, and maintaining enough unity so that it all feels like one movie and all the scenes belong together, and yet diversity so that emotional and narrative interest is maintained."

"When I look back upon the choices I made in making Mansfield Park, I feel they were pretty ballsy. I just thought there has to be a reason why I was doing a period piece. I wanted to say, "Look, we are rich because of slavery. We stole people and made them into slaves. Nothing comes for free." I didn't want to do another English dance party."

"Isn't life the strangest thing you've ever seen?"

"Rozema is one of Canada's most recognizable and successful film artists, famous for works in which the wilful imagination asserts itself despite bureaucracy, convention, and social expectation. As a writer and filmmaker, she is drawn to romantic figures whose artistry persists despite various obstacles, from institutionally derived notions of artistic standards to religiously supported ideas of appropriate sexualities."

"Aliens brings Ripley's story of alien impregnations, molecular acid, and death to an upbeat close by taking away the fear and isolation that plagued her since the end of Alien. As the lid closes on Ripley's cryo-tube, we realise that she's found the companionship and peace she deserves. Similarly, Terminator 2 sees the nightmare future of Judgment Day averted. The T-800 may have sacrificed himself to protect the human race, but the film's events have allowed Sarah to reconnect with her son and her own compassion. With stories as complete as these, it's hardly surprising that the filmmakers charged with making Terminator 3 and Alien 3 have struggled to find new directions in which to take them. In both cases, those second sequels were the opposite of Aliens and T2: they simply felt like "more of the same." In Alien 3, poor Ripley finds herself in a worse situation than she was at the start of Aliens - her surrogate family is dead, she's stuck in an all-male prison with an alien running around, and there's something horrible stirring in her viscera. Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines was, if anything, even more gloomy. Sarah Connor died between sequels; John Connor's a lonely drifter, and Judgment Day hasn't been cancelled - merely postponed. The sense of hope - not to mention Cameron's motto that "there's no fate but what we make for ourselves" - is replaced by the suggestion that annihilation by sentient machines is inescapable. Beyond Ripley and Sarah's stories in Aliens and T2, filmmakers could find only despair and nihilism."

"I look back on some films that I’ve made, and I don’t know if I would want to make that film now. I don’t know if I would want to fetishize the gun, like I did on a couple of Terminator movies 30+ years ago, in our current world. What’s happening with guns in our society turns my stomach."

"In short, James Cameron's sequels work because he comes up with new ways for his characters to evolve and progress, rather than merely react to a series of events set before them. The Ripley we see at the start of Aliens is different from the one who goes back into cryosleep at its end. Aliens and T2 may have dazzling action sequences, but it's these story and character progressions that make them so dramatically satisfying."

"It turns out that Cameron, who is known as an action filmmaker, he admits, believes that his films have often been too violent, and the heavy amounts of gun violence that play into films such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and True Lies he believes have no place in moral moviemaking in the current state of the world."

"Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality. … Don’t put limitations on yourself. Other people will do that for you. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t bet against yourself. And take risk. NASA has this phrase that they like, "Failure is not an option." But failure has to be an option. In art and exploration, failure has to be an option. Because it is a leap of faith. And no important endeavour that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks. … In whatever you are doing, failure is an option. But fear is not."

"This may surprise you, because it surprised me when I found out, but the single biggest thing that an individual can do to combat climate change is to stop eating animals. Because of the huge, huge carbon footprint of animal agriculture. I was shocked to find out that animal agriculture directly or indirectly accounts for 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions, compared to all transportation – every ship, car, truck, plane on the planet only accounts for 13%. Less than animal agriculture. So most people think that buying a Prius is the answer, and it’s certainly not wrong, but it’s not the biggest agent of climate change."

"[About veganism] You're going to be healthier, you're going to live longer, you're going to look better. You're going to have fewer zits. You're going to be slimmer. You're going to radiate health. You're going to have a better sex drive. That's what shifting away from meat and dairy does. My whole family did this, and we're doing spectacularly well from a health standpoint. I have not had a single sniffle, not a flu, not a cold, nothing that's taken me offline as much as an hour in three and a half years."