Literary Birthday – 18 July – Margaret Laurence
Margaret Laurence was born on 18 July 1926 and died on 5 January 1987.
Margaret Laurence Quotes
- When I say ‘work’ I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.
- This is part of what writers do. They speak for people who cannot speak for themselves.
- People have been saying the novel is dead for a long, long time. As far as I’m concerned, it’s still extremely alive. It simply finds new forms.
- I hope that a sense of love does come across. If it does, it’s because what I feel most of all when I’m writing my books is that each individual human being has great value. Each person is unique and irreplaceable. They matter. Of course, that is a very Western world outlook. But it’s profoundly my own
- In a sense, writing a novel is a sort of discovery. You know more or less where you’re headed, but everything could change in the doing of it. And, you know, you can be very surprised.
Margaret Laurence was a highly acclaimed Canadian novelist and short story writer. Her novels portray strong women striving for self-realisation while immersed in the daily struggle to make a living in a male-dominated world. She is the author of The Diviners. She was also a founder of the Writers’ Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada’s writing community. In 1972 she was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada. Laurence served as Chancellor of Trent University in Peterborough from 1981 to 1983. She also wrote Dance on the Earth: A Memoir.
Source for photograph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MargaretLaurenceImage.jpg
by Amanda Patterson
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