The Blind Assassin
Critique • Quotes
First editionFirst publication
2000
Literature form
Novel
Genres
Literary, historical fiction
Writing language
English
Author's country
Canada
Length
Approx. 206,000 words
Notable lines
Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The bridge was being repaired: she went right through the Danger sign. The car fell a hundred feet into the ravine, smashing through the treetops feathery with new leaves, then burst into flames and rolled down into the shallow creek at the bottom. Chunks of the bridge fell on top of it. Nothing much was left but charred smithereens.
— First lines
All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.
All of them?
Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself.
Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. They hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so the guy doesn't even know he's been hurt until much later. Then he finds out. Then his dick falls off.
Soon you'll regret all that sun-tanning. Your face will look like a testicle.
"I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose."
But I leave myself in your hands. What choice do I have? By the time you read this last page, that—if anywhere —is the only place I will be.
— Last lines
Critique • Quotes
