I was unfair to him, of course, but where would I have been without unfairness? In thrall, in harness. Young women need unfairness, it's one of their few defenses. They need their callousness, they need their ignorance. They walk in the dark, along the edges of high cliffs, humming to themselves, thinking themselves invulnerable.
Margaret AtwoodThe only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.
Margaret AtwoodThey spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.
Margaret AtwoodThey seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society dying of too much choice.
Margaret Atwood