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.

media saturation is probably very destructive to art. New movements get overexposed and exhausted before they have a chance to grow, and they turn to ashes in a short time. Some degree of time and obscurity is often very necessary to artists.

If you want to do creative work, there are tremendous sacrifices involved, and tremendous financial sacrifices too. It requires dedication and solitude.

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.

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.

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

Everyone knew in the 1950s why a girl from a nice family left home. The meaning of her theft of herself from her parents was clear to all - as well as what she'd be up to in that room of her own.