And what if the other kids laugh at me?” Kerry complained to her parents as she nibbled on a piece of toast that morning. “I have a Cape Breton accent! They’ll know I’m from Canada, and they’ll start asking me if I lived in an igloo or ate maple syrup, bacon and seal meat every day!”“You’re really overreacting,” Susan chuckled, sipping on a glass of orange juice. “Canada is a lot like the States and the only thing separating both countries is an imaginary boarder! If anyone laughs at you, tell them it doesn’t snow year-round, you got free health care while you were there and that you never rode a polar bear to school. Besides, do you know how many popular movies and TV shows from the States were filmed in Canada?”“It’s not just the Canada stuff mom,” Kerry sighed worriedly. “I’m from Gym, it’s an industrial dump!”“Yeah, and have you looked at Pittsburgh lately?” Susan asked. “Full of coal mines and steel mills, just like Sydney was when we lived there! I actually rather came to like the pollution, I don’t think I’d ever want to leave it.

— Rebecca McNutt

And what if you could go back in time and take all those hours of sorrow and insanity and replace them with something better?

— Rebecca McNutt

A picture's worth a thousand words. But a single word can make you think of over a thousand pictures in your mind, over a thousand moments, a thousand memories.

— Rebecca McNutt

Bernie believed in God. He believed that God wanted people to enjoy life to the fullest, not drench themselves in aversion and prejudice.

— Rebecca McNutt

Canada is a free country, after all.

— Rebecca McNutt

Capitalism has a way of letting people view the world through rust-colored glasses.

— Rebecca McNutt

Cell phones are certainly not necessary, and "but I'm from the digital age, this is what everyone in my generation is doing!" isn't a very good excuse for being hooked on a glowing screen 24/7. In the 1960s every teen of the times was tripping on acid and running off to find themselves in communes and love buses. It was a fad, there was no excuse for it, and it passed, just like I think that this generation's "cell phones are necessary for socialization" fad will eventually pass. What will it bring afterward? I don't even want to know, but I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope that it isn't anything else digital.

— Rebecca McNutt

Creosote made Mandy think of the thrill of rushing through a garden sprinkler as a kid, of playing washer toss in the backyard, of spending nights in the neighbors’ huge in-ground swimming pool when she was twelve, throwing glow sticks in the turquoise water during Canada Day block parties. She thought of Mud for a moment, how he’d loved doing all those things when he was a kid, but how, as he got older, it was all about popularity, sports, a life of illusion… and without warning, a totally different kind of memory filled her mind – the dull feeling of her head hitting the concrete walls near the wood shop at her old high school, the sounds of kids laughing, the sharp smell of sawdust, the buzzing of electric sanders nearby, the sound of Mud laughing while he beat her up… without realizing it, she’d started crying noiselessly.

— Rebecca McNutt

Directing a funeral isn’t about death at all. Funerals are for the living, not the dead.

— Rebecca McNutt

Don’t you think it’s better to continue reading than to just close the book?

— Rebecca McNutt