A lot of artists don't survive, do they? You work very hard and finally you get what you want and it destroys you.

Legend adheres to artists whose deaths seem the corollaries of their works.

Sacrificing everything for one's craft is something some people can't help. They can't help themselves. They must do it. They're driven to do it.

What if you lived your entire life completely without urgency? You went to classes, you ate your meals, on Saturday nights a boy you didn't love took you to the movies; now and then you actually had a conversation with someone. The rest of the time -the hours that weren't accounted for-you spent waiting for something to happen to you; when you were particularly desperate, you went out looking for it.

I became intent on saving him through showing him that he was loved.

Fame and success put tremendous demands on people. It robs them of their necessary privacy and anonymity. That's hard for even healthy people to deal with.

Rebels defy the rules of society, risking everything to retain their humanity. If the world Atwood depicts is chilling, if 'God is losing,' the only hope for optimism is a vision that includes the inevitability of human struggle against the prevailing order.