Some of the old diseases that we think are gone - case in point, measles - are back, now that somebody has spread around, in a very wicked way, the idea that these inoculations were making children autistic. Now we're getting outbreaks that are killing children. The end result is, if you create a population that lacks immunity, and diseases are still there, you're going to get outbreaks and you're going to get death.
Margaret AtwoodIt used to be that your bloodlines dictated who you were. But the U.S. became the land of the self-made man, in which not only did you make a fortune but you could make up everything else about yourself as well. You move into a new town with a spurious pedigreed background and you just make yourself up.
Margaret AtwoodThe characters [of The Tempest] have always been favorites of mine. It is one of his meditations on art - what it does.
Margaret AtwoodWalking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ice. The blade of the skate floats, she knows, on a thin film of water, which it melts by pressure and which freezes behind it. This is the freedom of the present tense, this sliding edge.
Margaret AtwoodI never have [suffered writerโs block], although Iโve had books that didnโt work out. I had to stop writing them. I just abandoned them. It was depressing, but it wasnโt the end of the world. When it really isnโt working, and youโve been bashing yourself against the wall, itโs kind of a relief. I mean, sometimes you bash yourself against the wall and you get through it. But sometimes the wall is just a wall. Thereโs nothing to be done but go somewhere else.
Margaret Atwood