Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hard-shelled, firmly closed.
Margaret AtwoodThere's something final about saying you were married once. It's like saying you were dead once. It shuts them up.
Margaret AtwoodThe short answer to 'Why do you write' is - I suppose I write for some of the same reasons I read: to live a double life; to go places I haven't been; to examine life on earth; to come to know people in ways, and at depths, that are otherwise impossible; to be surprised.
Margaret AtwoodThe only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.
Margaret AtwoodOld lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines.
Margaret AtwoodIf you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.
Margaret Atwood