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Quote by Annie Proulx

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The Shipping News

The narrative follows Quoyle, a failed journalist whose marriage ended in his wife's death, as he relocates from New York to the remote coastal community of Killick-Claw in Newfoundland. There he takes a position reporting on shipping news for the local Gammy Bird newspaper, a publication known for its eccentric coverage of car wrecks and sexual abuse cases alongside maritime traffic. The novel explores themes of family inheritance, community belonging, and personal transformation against the harsh backdrop of Atlantic Canada. The protagonist gradually adapts to the distinctive local culture, forms new relationships, and confronts the violent history embedded in his family name. The prose style incorporates elements of Newfoundland dialect and folklore, with chapter headings drawn from a mariner's handbook. The work received significant literary recognition including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award. more

Author

Annie Proulx
Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx, born on August 22, 1935, is an American journalist and novelist known for her distinctive narrative style and profound portrayals of life in the American West. more

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“All of us believe you belong here,” I’d said to the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson girls as they sat, many of them looking a little awestruck, in the Gothic old-world dining hall at Oxford, surrounded by university professors and students who’d come out for the day to mentor them. I said something similar anytime we had kids visit the White House—teens we invited from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation; children from local schools who showed up to work in the garden; high schoolers who came for our career days and workshops in fashion, music, and poetry; even kids I only got to give a quick but emphatic hug to in a rope line. The message was always the same. You belong. You matter. I think highly of you. An economist from a British university would later put out a study that looked at the test performances of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson students, finding that their overall scores jumped significantly after I’d started connecting with them—the equivalent of moving from a C average to an A. Any credit for improvement really belonged to the girls, their teachers, and the daily work they did together, but it also affirmed the idea that kids will invest more when they feel they’re being invested in. I understood that there was power in showing children my regard.”

“Catherine loved it too; (the music) but she said it sounded sweetest at the top of the steps, and she went up in the dark; I followed. They shut the house door below, never noting our absence, it was so full of people. She made no stay at the stairs' head, but mounted farther, to the garret where Heathcliff was confined; and called him. He stubbornly declined answering for a while - she persevered, and finally persuaded him to come to hold communication with her through the boards.”

“I don’t believe that the rough and tumble nature of children, especially boys is inherently wrong. We see in nature, bear cubs, deer, goats, puppies, especially males, play rough with each other. We’re not animals, so we do try to civilize things a bit, but that rough and tumble play creates an environment where children are strengthened, and they learn that their bodies endure pain a certain way. They also learn empathy, when they see that a twisted arm hurts, they are less likely to twist someone’s arm. This unstructured type of play isn’t suited for classrooms, where six years olds are expected to sit at a desk and work for more than eight hours a day, and so it is discouraged. Children do not have the opportunity to properly express those natural tendencies to compete, to wrestle, or to express the emotions behind those desires.”