Robertson Davies Quotes

To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.

One learns one's mystery at the price of one's innocence.

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.

Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.

On the whole, we treat the Devil shamefully, and the worse we treat Him the more He laughs at us.

A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart.

There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.

All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages.

Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.

The world is burdened with young fogies. Old men with ossified minds are easily dealt with. But men who look young, act young and everlastingly harp on the fact that they are young, but who nevertheless think and act with a degree of caution that would be excessive in their grandfathers, are the curse of the world. Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.

Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time.

Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best.

If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.

The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so... That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity.

Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself.

The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.

The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit. And that depends on your age, your experience, your psychological and spiritual need.

The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.

The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love books, but do not live by books

You never see what you want to see, forever playing to the gallery.

The young are often accused of exaggerating their troubles; they do so, very often, in the hope of making some impression upon the inertia and the immovability of the selfish old.

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.

Comparatively few people know what a million dollars actually is. To the majority it is a gaseous concept, swelling or decreasing as the occasion suggests. In the minds of politicians, perhaps more than anywhere, the notion of a million dollars has this accordion-like ability to expand or contract; if they are disposing of it, the million is a pleasing sum, reflecting warmly upon themselves; if somebody else wants it, it becomes a figure of inordinate size, not to be compassed by the rational mind.

Inactivity and deprivation of all accustomed stimulus is not rest; it is a preparation for the tomb