In my early life, I was a professional folk singer. I used to sing on the national television and radio in Canada. Nobody knows that – but now I’ve said it, haven’t I? I’m strictly a shower singer at the minute. Mary Gordon Read Quote
My father died when I was seven. I guess I am interested in fatherlessness as a metaphor for vulnerability and unprotectedness. Being on your own in the world in a way you’re not quite ready for, ever. Mary Gordon Read Quote
If the moral good of fiction stems mainly from a habit of mind it inculcates in the reader, styles are neither good nor bad, and to describe some fictional enterprises as false is pointless. Mary Gordon Read Quote
Feminism is very much a part of a lot of my student’s lives, but they’re not going to march about it or take a public political stance. And I think more and more young women are claiming that they’re not feminists – even though they are. Mary Gordon Read Quote
I wasn’t thinking about my pension plan until about two years ago. When I was in my twenties, the idea that you’d be thinking of taking a job based on its health-care policy was completely foreign. But these days young people are thinking about these things. Mary Gordon Read Quote
It was actually a women’s writing group I belonged to in graduate school that gave me the courage to move from poetry to fiction. Mary Gordon Read Quote
My favorite dish is bibimbap, which is composed of various vegetables, steamed and pickled, and meat toppings over a bed of rice. Mary Gordon Read Quote
I don’t have any great first job tales: I’ve never worked on a tramp steamer or in a coal mine or anything like that. I think the inspiration for my writing came largely from my father and the joy that life in books represented to me. Mary Gordon Read Quote