Mordecai Richler Quotes

I hope that one day the people of Quebec will one day be a part of the concert of nations. This is an internal debate. This will happen when Quebecers are ready.

I want my own country, not against Canada but for Quebec.

I want to tell Quebecers that are listening: if you want to get back to the goal of creating a country, only a majority government can do it, a sovereigntist government of the Parti Quebecois.

Why would it be ridiculous that Quebec has an army?

Traitor? Traitor to what? My country is Quebec!

Language is at the root of Quebec nationalism.

Sovereigntism and separatism they are… it may seem like it's splitting hairs, but a lot of Quebecers are sovereignists - they respect the sovereignty of Quebec. They're not interested in separating.

Long live Montreal, Long live Quebec! Long live Free Quebec!

The Conservatives over the years have done a great deal, from Sir John A, to Diefenbaker, and others.

The biggest risk to Quebec isn't sovereignty. It is staying in Canada.

From that moment on, there will be an irreversible process to separate Quebec from Canada.

Gilles Duceppe avoids making campaign promises altogether so he can emphasize that his Bloc Quebecois has only one objective: to prevent Harper from forming a majority government.

It would be simply suicidal to French Canadians to form a party by themselves.

We want an independent Quebec within a strong and united Canada.

When they're talking to Lucien Bouchard, they're talking to Brian Mulroney.

It was relatively easy, we now realize, to categorize countries and nations. You knew who your enemies were and whom you could count on as collaborators and friends. And even more importantly, you had ready-made scapegoats to take the blame when things were going wrong.

It has become routine for national politicians to blame Europe. When something works, they claim it as their success. When something doesn't work, then Europe is to blame.

The only party that has better bragging rights than the Greens is the Bloc Quebecois.

The trouble with the SNP is they want power without responsibility. They do not want to take difficult decisions.

The thing is, it's much easier to be a rightwing populist than a leftwing one, because the left always have to explain why things are the way they are. The right can just blame the foreigners.

If you scapegoat someone, it's a third party that will be aware of it. It won't be you. Because you will believe you are doing the right thing.

If every component part of the nation claims the right of self-determination for itself, there is no one nation and there is no independence.

Well, I am trying to put Quebec in its place - and the place of Quebec is in Canada, nowhere else.

My husband was a hospital architect and he was working on some hospitals in Alberta, and I told him to try to find out what they thought about separatism. He would come back on weekends. He said "well, I think I found out how they feel about separatism. I brought it up at lunch in the cafeteria, and everybody at the table was silent and then somebody said 'Let's change the subject'."

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.