People cry at weddings for the same reason they cry at happy endings: because they so desperately want to believe in something they know is not credible.
Margaret AtwoodIt's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many.
Margaret AtwoodWe all know that a book is not really a person. It isnโt a human being. But if you are a lover of books as books โ as objects, that is โ and ignore the human element in them โ that is, their voices โ you will be committing an error of the soul, because you will be an idolator, or else a fetishist.
Margaret AtwoodIn Shakespeare Saved My Life, [author Laura Bates] said she got better papers from [prisoners] than she got from people in her regular classes. Because she was teaching, of course, Macbeth, and a number of them had murdered people. The guy who wrote the best paper said, "You do have this, 'Is this a dagger which I see before me?' before you do it, but in my case it was a gun."
Margaret Atwood