Lori Lansens quotes:

Aunt Lovey used to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed a writer's voice. 'Read,' she'd say, 'and if you have a writer's voice, one day it will shout out, 'I can do that too!

The most successful people in the most impossible situations are the ones that are sure they're gonna get out of it, and they go on thinking that, even if they die trying.

Evidence tells that black and Latina woman are more accepting of curves, and that's a good thing.

If you don't like something about yourself, change it. If you're OK with it, you gotta own it. There's nothing in between.

We're seeing a decline in religion in North America but, I hope, a rise in individual spirituality. Whatever that means to people.

Now that I live in Southern California, my current world certainly speaks to me, and I sense that my next book will have a more American and southerly setting. But that's certainly not to say I won't be back to Leaford.

On the farm, in our first-floor bedroom, my sister and I were sheltered in the essence of normal. We were not hidden, but unseen. The orange farmhouse was our castle, our kingdom the fields around, and the shallow creek that bisected our property the sea we crossed to find adventure."

I feel, holding books, accommodating their weight and breathing their dust, an abiding love. I trust them, in a way that I can't trust my computer, though I couldn't do without it. Books are matter. My books matter. What would I have done through these years without the library and all its lovely books?

Art isn't a product. It's an experience

Because I live in California now, I find my musings really being centered in this world.

How cruel it must be for a man to live past his soul.

I have had, like most women, a lifelong preoccupation with my weight. My first published short story was a love story between an elderly man and a very young morbidity obese woman.

When I grew up, all of our news, weather, and sports came from America. The people where I grew up rooted for American teams as opposed to Canadian teams.

When we talk about God, I think what most of us mean is some greater thing, some higher power that can help us access our own strength or give us strength.

When you stand outside, you look around and find that the people you're with live on the fringes.

Winning the lottery is winning the lottery. It's highly unlikely and very unusual.

Write,' she said, 'as if you'll never be read. That way you'll be sure to tell the truth.

Regrets serve their purpose. You'll see.

The beach was empty and dark but she couldn't hear her fear over the call of the surf.

If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.

I was in the emergency room twice with heart palpitations and panic attacks. As one of my actor friends pointed out: your body doesn't know that you're making art. You think about struggle and challenge and you imagine yourself weighing 302 pounds and being restricted and in despair. Your body doesn't know that that's not the case.

I hum some secret place into being, thinking of this other me, the one that only I can see, a girl called She, who is not We, a girl who I will never be.

I'm not alone in having obese people in my circle and in my family. I have loved morbidly obese people, and I don't approach obesity with revulsion or judgment but with empathy and compassion.

The city, no matter how small, is corrupt and unrepentant, while the sun shines brighter in the country, making people more wholesome.

The drugstore is a wonderful place to see all manner of ailments.

the only thing left to do is love

The strangest thing about strange things is that they're only strange when you hear about them or think about them later, but never when you're living them.

The world's waistlines are expanding, but it's an epidemic of a larger issue in terms of our bounty having become our burden.

What is it about sadness that can be so fulfilling?