I did ... learn an important distinction in graduate school: a speculation about who had syphilis when is gossip if it's about your friends, a plot element if it's about a character in a novel, and scholarship if it's about John Keats.
Margaret AtwoodWriting of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated deep down, by a fear or and fascination with mortality - by a desire to make the risky trip to the underworld and to bring something or someone back from the dead.
Margaret AtwoodThere is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits.
Margaret AtwoodI would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.
Margaret Atwood