Quotes from book
The Tin Flute

The Tin Flute
Gabrielle RoyOriginal title Bonheur d'occasion (French, 1945)

The Tin Flute , Gabrielle Roy’s first novel, is a classic of Canadian fiction. Imbued with Roy’s brand of compassion and understanding, this story focuses on a family in the Saint-Henri slums of Montreal, its struggles to overcome poverty and ignorance, and its search for love.

Gabrielle Roy photo

“We're saying that Germany wants to destroy us. And right now in Germany a whole lot of good quiet people like us, no worse than we are, they're getting whipped into a frenzy by the same story. They're being told the others are penning them into a country that's too small, and don't want to let them live. On one side or the other somebody's being sold a bill of goods. Maybe the Germans are wrong. We don't know. All I know is, I don't want to go killing some guy that never did me any harm, and who hasn't the choice but to do what he's told. I've got nothing against that poor guy. Why should I go and stick a bayonet into him? He wants to live, just like I do. He doesn't want to die.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P.45

Gabrielle Roy photo

“He [Jean] still felt surges of generosity, and gave in to them if they didn’t cramp his style. That was it. He could be kind if kindness caused him no problems.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 206

Gabrielle Roy photo

“She too was standing in the lamp’s raw light. Her cheeks looked hollow, her lips too red, too bold.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 84

Gabrielle Roy photo

“…You and a lot of others like you wanted nothing more than a job and a bit of a salary just to keep the body and soul together. Instead of that you were doing, nothing and the rest of us who were making a dollar, well, we were paying for that. We paid to keep you doing nothing. In Canada, here, it got so the two-thirds of the population kept the other third idle!”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P.148

Gabrielle Roy photo

“Every moment of every day and night he was able to take the measure of his failure now. Even his family's poverty which for years he had refused to admit, began to grow familiar to him, but like the memory of a companion that one has left behind. Rose-Anna…She'd been a young girl at his side, then tired, then overwhelmed, and here she was sleeping beside him on a kind of pallet, on the floor. He could hear the whimpers from the children in their sleep.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 281-282

Gabrielle Roy photo

“He seemed to be witnessing with his own eyes the supreme bankruptcy of humanity. Wealth had spoken the truth that night on the mountain.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 376.

Gabrielle Roy photo

“Where could you find a light to guide the world?”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 319

Gabrielle Roy photo

“They could see the rapids on their right. The swaying of the bus made her sick and weak, and her willpower was failing with her strength. She was afraid of falling into a torpor in which everything would become immaterial to her, and she tensed in an effort to seem gay and even attentive to Emmanuel.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 330

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“Why, this man seemed barely older than himself, Emmanuel thought. He gave off a sense of almost irresistible vigor. Quite simply, he had at last become a man…”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P.375

Gabrielle Roy photo

“The sun was already a bright, running brook. From the gables of the houses hung sharp-pointed icicles, like gleaming crystal. From time to time one would break off with a snap, and crash at Rose-Anne's feet in shining shards. She progressed very slowly, afraid of falling, always seeking a hand-hold somewhere. Then she would be in soft snow again, which meant harder work but less fear of a slip and fall.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 94

Gabrielle Roy photo

“This is my wedding day! The day I marry Emmanuel! And the word "wedding," which she had always linked the happiness, now seemed austere, distressing, full of snares and revelations. She saw her mother, heavy and moving with difficulty. A vision of herself as a victim of the same deformity was vivid in her mind.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 342

Gabrielle Roy photo

“Finally anger took possession of him. It was his turn to ask the question already raised by so many others: We, down there, the ones who join up, we're giving everything we have to give, maybe our arms and our two legs. He looked up at the high grills, the curving driveways, the sumptuous facades, and completed his thought: Are these people giving all they have to give?”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 319-320

Gabrielle Roy photo

“He saw a tree in a backyard, its branches tortured among electric wires and clotheslines, its leaves dry and shriveled before they were fully out. Low in the sky, dark clouds heralded the storm.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 383.

Gabrielle Roy photo

“It began to rain harder. The last snow was under attack by these heavy, wide-spaced drops. All that remained underfoot of months of frost and freezing was a light crust that crumbled as he walked. The sidewalk was soon completely washed by this slow, tenacious rain. Its smooth, shining surface reflected the midnight lights and tangles of naked branches.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 210

Gabrielle Roy photo

“Rose-Anna was tugging at the edge of her apron with a tired, futile gesture she had never made in the past – the grandmother’s gesture.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P.260

Gabrielle Roy photo

“Why did she have to wake up this morning? Or ever! But especially this morning. Her stare took on a glint of panic. Then she thought: Oh! This is my wedding day!”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 342

Gabrielle Roy photo

“Azarius, for his part, had not made her voyage to the depths of pain to understand that death and birth, in that place, have almost the same tragic meaning.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 367

Gabrielle Roy photo

“Florentine… Florentine Lacasse… half song, half squalor, half springtime, half misery, the young man murmured.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 27