Quotes By Author: L.M. Montgomery

“That’s one of the things we learn as we grow older — how to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at twenty.”

“Then Diana puts too many murders into [her stories]. She says most of the time she doesn’t know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.”

“The p’int of good writing is to know when to stop.”

“It was not, of course, a proper thing to do. But then I have never pretended, nor will ever pretend, that Emily was a proper child. Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull nobody would read them.”

“Don’t you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?”

“Don’t try to write anything you can’t feel – it will be a failure – ‘echoes nothing worth”

“Nobody with any real sense of humor *can* write a love story. . . . Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule. (90-91)”

“I’d write of people and places like I knew, and I’d make my characters talk everyday English; and I’d let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I’d give them a chance, Anne–I’d give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men the world, I suppose, but you’d have to go a long piece to find them…But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us. Keep on writing, Anne.”

“When I left Queen’s my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I am going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes – what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows – what new landscapes – what new beauties – what curves and hills and valleys farther on.”

“My pen shall heal, not hurt.”

“Fancies are like shadows…you can’t cage them, they’re such wayward, dancing things.”

“Despair is a free man—hope is a slave.”

“Jane’s stories are too sensible. Then Diana puts too much murders into hers. She says most of the time she doesn’t know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.” -Anne Shirley”

“The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth.”

“There is such a place as fairyland – but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.”