Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life.

Shields was made Full Professor of English in 1995 and on retirement in 2000 Carol Shields became Professor Emerita at the University of Manitoba. In 1955 while on British Council sponsored study week in Scotland Carol Shields met a Canadian engineering student Donald Hugh Shields. In 1980 Carol Shields and Don settled in Winnipeg Manitoba after Don was hired to teach in the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Engineering.

She is best known for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries which won the U. S.