Miriam Toews
Miriam Toews
Miriam Toewsis a Canadian writer, best known for her novels A Complicated Kindness and All My Puny Sorrows. She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for body of work. She is also a two-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionWriter
CountryCanada
character create failure imagination inevitable life reflect saving similarity stare window worth
I stare out the window and reflect on the similarity between writing and saving a life and the inevitable failure of one's imagination and one's goals and ambitions to create a character or a life worth saving.
degree ended life point pregnant
At one point in my life, I wanted to do a master's degree in Irish literature, but I ended up getting pregnant instead.
I don't even know what 'successful' means. We're all failures. Look at the world. We're all complicit.
exhausting mentally physically takes
I have a problem with beginnings... and endings... and middles. But I don't know what else I would do. I find it very, very difficult to write. It takes everything; it's physically and mentally and emotionally exhausting for me. And my neighbours. And my dog.
beside died dollars friend iron julie money says thai time trees
My father died beside trees on iron rails... He had 77 dollars on him at the time, and we used the money for Thai takeout because, as my friend Julie says about times like this, 'You still have to eat.'
art elaborate functions myths narratives taught
Like every Canadian, I have been taught that one of the most important functions of art is to supply and elaborate the myths and narratives of nationhood.
aspect fiction kids order playful restore seem sort
When everything does seem out of control, writing fiction is a way I can order that chaos and restore some sort of meaning. I like the playful aspect of writing fiction. You know how it is when we are kids and we make up our worlds: You be this guy, and I am going to be this guy, and we are going to go slay dragons.
built family people resistant virus
There are people who are just suicidal, regardless. They are built to self-destruct. It seems, in my family, like a virus that's resistant to any kind of help or care or medication.
featured settings sixth time
'Irma Voth' is my sixth book, but it's only the third time I've featured Mennonite settings and characters.
ignore leave
Ignore all advice about writing. Leave your blood on every page. Every page!
believe decent heaven human life reasonably sorts within
There are so many things in my life that would be completely not on within the conservative church. And yet I think of myself as a reasonably decent human being. With all sorts of flaws, you know, but still reasonably decent. If I did believe in Heaven and Hell, I would really, honestly, believe I was going to go to Heaven.
becomes cathartic create easier experience felt helps order outpouring understand whatever
Writing helps me to create order out of chaos and make sense of things. It helps me to understand what I've experienced, what I've felt and seen, so it becomes a little easier to handle. On the other hand, I don't want it to be just a cathartic experience, an outpouring of grief or whatever it is.
depressed incumbent people ridiculous sister smile
With my father and sister being very depressed for most of their lives, it was incumbent on me to try to make them laugh, in this ridiculous way. They were the wittiest people I knew, but to get a smile from them was like winning the lottery.
We don't choose the books we write; they choose us.