I think even celebrities deserve their privacy. I really do. It's sort of a hideous spectacle, the public feeding on all this information.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing ever happened except God.

I think art, the discipline of creating, really does require tremendous solitude. But the whole creative process can seal your life to such an extent that while you're creating, you feel very self-sufficient. I've certainly experienced that.

I believe in the curative powers of love as the English believe in tea or Catholics believe in the Miracle of Lourdes.