It's rather useless to write a gripping narrative with nothing in it but climate change because novels are always about people even if they purport to be about rabbits or robots.

The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller, to whom the book is dedicated.

I used to act in college, but always comedy. Didn't do [William] Shakespeare - did Ben Jonson.

The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but 'Am I really that boring?'

I tried for the longest time to find out what deconstructionism was. Nobody was able to explain it to me clearly. The best answer I got was from a writer, who said, 'Honey, it's bad news for you and me.

Women are human beings, and human beings are a very mixed lot. I've always been against the idea that women were Victorian angels, that they could do no wrong. I've always thought it was horseshit and does nobody any good. Remember, Lizzie Borden got off largely because the cultural agenda had convinced people that women were morally superior to men, so Lizzie Borden was "incapable" of taking the ax and giving her mother 40 whacks.

And consider: it is loss to which everything flows, absence in which everything flowers