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Mordecai Richler Biography

Mordecai Richler

Mordecai Richler, CC (January 27, 1931 – July 3, 2001) was a Canadian writer. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Barney's Version (1997). His 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He is also well known for the Jacob Two-Two children's fantasy series.

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Mordecai Richler Quotes

There are three sides to every argument. Yours. The other guy's. And the right side.

Argument, Guy, Right, Side, Sides, Three

In Canada, nobody is ever overthrown because nobody gives a damn.

Canada, Damn, Giving, Nobody, Umpires

My enduring feeling about René Lévesque is that if he had chosen to hang me, even as he tightened the rope round my neck, he would have complained about how humiliating it was for him to spring the trapdoor. And then, once I was swinging in the wind, he would blame my ghost for having obliged him to murder, thereby imposing a guilt trip on a sweet, self-effacing, downtrodden Francophone.

Sweet, Spring, Self, Levesque, Obliged, Rope

In, 1950, at the age, 19 I dropped out of St. George William College in Montreal, as it then was, and sailed for England on the Franconia. Foolishly, no arrogantly, believing I could put Canada and its picayune problems behind me, never dreaming it would become the raw material of most of my fiction and non-fiction. Or that I would care so deeply about its surviving intact.

Dream, Believe, College, Surviving, Material, Arrogantly

I obviously prefer writing novels but I take my journalism very seriously, and I enjoy doing it between novels. It gives me an opportunity to move in the outside world.

Enjoy, Gives, Move, Moving, Opportunity, Writing

Fiorito has all the right stuff. His splendid memoir about his relationship with his dying father belongs on that small shelf with Philip Roth's Patrimony and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes.

Ashes, Dying, Father, Frank, Relationship

Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates.

Brief, Dying, Flicker, Frustration, Same, Writing

Wherever I travel I'm too late. The orgy has moved elsewhere.

Elsewhere, Late, Orgy, Too Late, Travel

If you don't count some of Jehovah's injunctions, there are no humorists in the Bible.

Bible, Humorists, Ifs, Injunctions, Jehovah

Listen your Lordship, I'm a respecter of institutions. Even in Paris, I remained a Canadian. I puffed hashish, but I didn't inhale.

Hashish, Institutions, Paris, Remained

Nothing is absolute any longer. There is a choice of beliefs and a choice of truths to go with them. If you choose not to choose then there is no truth at all. There are only points of view.

Absolute, Belief, Choice, Choices, Longer, Views

Each man creates god in his own image.

Men, Man, God, Creates, Image

And furthermore did you know that behind the discovery of America there was a Jewish financier?

America, Behinds, Discovery, Financier, Jewish, Know

I'm world-famous. . . all over Canada.

Canada, World, World Famous

I don't hold with shamans, witch doctors, or psychiatrists. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or even Dickens, understood more about the human condition than ever occurred to any of you. You overrated bunch of charlatans deal with the grammar of human problems, and the writers I've mentioned with the essence.

Dickens, Doctors, Essence, Hold, Problem, Problems

When a child is born, I once explained to the kids, some dads lay down bottles of wine for them that will mature when they grow up into ungrateful adults. Instead, what you're going to get from me, as each of you turns sixteen, is a library of the one hundred books that gave me the most pleasure when I was a know-nothing adolescent.

Child, Children, Dad, Gave, Grow, Growing Up

I have always been skeptical of medical orthodoxies, because sooner, rather than later, so many of them are turned on their heads. Or, put another way, providing you are prepared to wait it out, what was adjudged bad for you yesterday is likely to prove beneficial today.

Yesterday, Waiting, Today, Turned, Skeptical, Bad

There are ten commandments, right? Well, it's like an exam. You get eight out of ten, you're just about top of the class.

Eight, Class, Ethics, Right, Commandments

I had, like any other young novelist, started out by believing the difficult thing was to get published and that, once you managed that, well, your financial problems were over. I discovered, like any other serious novelist, that actually they had only just begun.

Believe, Discovered, Financial Problems, Managed, Novelists, Published

For the record, pot, like the Reader's Digest , is not necessarily habit-forming, but both can lead to hard-core addiction : heroin, in one case, abridged bad books, in the other. Either way you look at it, a withdrawal from a meaningful life.

Abridged, Addiction, Book, Lead, Look, Meaningful

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