Best Of Emily Carr's "Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr"

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr

Painting above: Forest Landscape No.2 c. 1935 by Emily Carr

Oh the West! I’m of it and love it.

p. 5

I’m not going to the affair in the buildings 

but have to appear at a pink tea at the Empress. 

Why can’t those who collected and got the thing say, 

“Here!” and the Government say, “Thanks!” 

and the janitor hang it on the wall? 

And why must one drink tea at the Empress on the occasion?

p.42 

I wish I could sit before it again and realize it fiercely, vitally.

p.46

[Lee Nan] is a Chinese artist […] His exhibition was in an 

old brick store in Chinatown, 556 Cormorant Street. 

It must have taken some courage. 

His cold, moist little hand, as I shook it, said it did. 

(He once tried to join the Arts and Crafts Society 

and was refused because of his nationality.) 

His work is good and he knows it and loves it.

He had a room full of his paintings […] there was a gay bunch of flowers on it 

and a little new exercise book in which the guests wrote their names, 

the Orientals on one side of the page and the whites on the other. 

There were not many signatures.

p.59

If the terminus of all roads is God, what matter which road we take? 

But hail your fellow travellers from a distance. 

Don’t try to catch up and keep step. 

Yell cheerio across the fields, but stick to your own particular path, 

be it paved or grassed, or just plain old dirt. 

It’s your path and suits your make of boots.

p.66-67

Emily, don’t you know by now that you’re an 

oddment and a natural-born “solitaire”? 

There is no cluster or sunburst about you. 

You’re just a paste solitaire in a steel claw setting. 

You don’t have to be kept in a safety box or 

even removed when the hands are washed.

p.76

To make God personal is to make him little, 

finite not infinite. 

I want the big God.

p.80

Sewing—a necessary evil—and a sketch on the cliffs in the evening. 

They are very beautiful. It is when the sun has dropped behind the Sooke hills 

and blobbed yellow and red over everything just before he did it. 

People generally rave over the red and yellow but I’m in a hurry always for it to get over. 

Then “it” comes, tender, melting mystery. 

I love the woods at that hour—no blaring lights and darks 

to perplex and make you restless with their shifting and sparkle, 

but that lovely mellow peace so much upper and richer than sun glare. 

I shall love the lagoon in the evenings. 

The woods will darken quickly because of the hill 

but the grand expanse of beach and sea will hold the after-glow for long. 

p.110

Writing is more human than painting.

p. 155

A domineering liver is a fearsome thing.

p.195

We cannot elude matter. It has got to be faced, not run away from. 

We have got to contract it with our five senses, to grow our way through it. 

We are not boring down into darkness but through into light.

p.197

There is a side of friendship that develops better and stronger 

by correspondence than contact, 

especially with some people who can get their thoughts 

clearer when they see them written.

p.206

People say, “I want to remember Lizzie as last I saw her in life.” 

But I love to remember her as last I saw her in death. 

Life had always seemed so full of frets and worries for her. 

Quick, troubled movement […] It was like being introduced to a new Lizzie,

 this radiant person in the coffin. 

It was as though the spirit, stepping out of clay, 

had illuminated it in passing and showed up the 

serene, queenly presence within. 

People are afraid to look at the dead. 

Sometimes they say they want to remember them 

going about their ordinary tasks. 

I want always to remember Lizzie’s coffin face. 

It was so completely satisfied.

p.252-253

I am also glad that I am showing these men that women can hold up their end. 

The men resent a woman getting any honour 

in what they consider is essentially their field. 

Men painters mostly despise women painters.
So I have decided to stop squirming, 

to throw any honour in which Canada and women. 

It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw, 

not because she is Canada but because she’s s something sublime 

that you were born into, some great rugged power that you are a part of. 

p.287