Latest Joseph Boyden Quotes from Interviews

• I believe truly that Canada is a living history and we're going through some of the most important time in this country's short 150 years.

  Joseph Boyden

  Believe, Important, I Believe

  Source: www.cbc.ca

• I'm a writer. I should be allowed to speak about my writing at times. And I'm really excited to speak about that. There's nothing I am shameful of or anything else in my novels. They are my children and I'm happy to speak about my children.

  Joseph Boyden

  Children, Writing, Speak

  Source: www.cbc.ca

• Compared to Americans, Canadians are often more gentle in their approach to things. They're much more apologetic. There's less room for conflict.

  Joseph Boyden

  Rooms, Conflict, Apologetic

  Source: therumpus.net

• During World War I the Canadians were the shock troops. In many historical cases, Canadians have been very proficient at killing, and doing what we have to in order to survive. But no one wants to acknowledge that fact.

  Joseph Boyden

  War, Order, Historical

  Source: therumpus.net

• People will say that Canada, unlike America, was not birthed from violence. But I want to say, "What are you talking about?" It's just not true.

  Joseph Boyden

  Talking, America, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• America seems to celebrate its more violent past, but Canada doesn't like to recognize those things. The willingness to accept the existence of violence separates our two countries.

  Joseph Boyden

  Country, Past, Two

  Source: therumpus.net

• There's a few scholars that object to how the italicized sections suggest that Native people are to take some part in the blame for how colonization occurred. But I say, "Yes they are." Not nearly as much blame as the colonizers, of course. But we are not just victims. I hate this idea that we are all just victimized and oppressed and etcetera etcetera. It's dehumanizing in its own way.

  Joseph Boyden

  Hate, Ideas, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• Canada and America are very, very different. It's true that we share a language and many customs. But Americans have a very different view of the world.

  Joseph Boyden

  Views, America, Different

  Source: therumpus.net

• I never want to play down to the reader. I think readers are willing to go along if they're intrigued.

  Joseph Boyden

  Thinking, Play, Want

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'm intrigued by the classic Greek tragedies, as well as by the idea of the Greek chorus.

  Joseph Boyden

  Ideas, Greek, Tragedy

  Source: therumpus.net

• There's the concept that dreams are as important - if not more important - than reality. The attention that one pays to those things in the shadows is very much a part of the Indian experience.

  Joseph Boyden

  Dream, Reality, Shadow

  Source: therumpus.net

• The beliefs of Native people are no less powerful or important just because they focus on a different "form of magic."

  Joseph Boyden

  Powerful, People, Focus

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'm fascinated by the magic realism used by many writers. I think it goes hand-in-hand with the Indian experience. It's a very different way of viewing the world.

  Joseph Boyden

  Thinking, Magic Realism, Hands

  Source: therumpus.net

• The history needs to serve the story, not the story the history. But at the same time you can't stray too far.

  Joseph Boyden

  Needs, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

• From a craft standpoint, telling a story in the first-person present tense over the course of 500 pages is a daunting challenge.

  Joseph Boyden

  Challenges, Stories, Crafts

  Source: therumpus.net

• As a fiction writer, of course, you need to take some leeway with certain aspects of history to make the story work.

  Joseph Boyden

  Needs, Fiction, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

• Being a mixed-blood person of Ojibway and European ancestry, I always found that I only heard one side of the story - that was the conquerers' side, the side of the French Jesuit missionaries that came to live in what is now Ontario.

  Joseph Boyden

  Blood, Ontario, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

• There were incredibly complex societies already existing in North America long before Europeans arrived. So many people think that before European contact it was just Natives huddling around a fire, waiting for civilization to come save them. But that was not the case.

  Joseph Boyden

  Thinking, Fire, Civilization

  Source: therumpus.net

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