And consider: it is loss to which everything flows, absence in which everything flowers
Margaret AtwoodVanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.
Margaret AtwoodWalking was not fast enough, so we ran. Running was not fast enough, so we galloped. Galloping was not fast enough, so we sailed. Sailing was not fast enough, so we rolled merrily along on long metal tracks. Long metal tracks were not fast enough, so we drove. Driving was not fast enough, so we flew. Flying isn't fast enough for us. We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind.
Margaret AtwoodI was horrified in high school by the fate of the hanged maids at the end of the Odyssey; it seemed unfair to me, even then.
Margaret AtwoodI don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.
Margaret AtwoodThere's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.
Margaret AtwoodSooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space.
Margaret AtwoodGardening is not a rational act. What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth, that ancient ceremony of which the Pope kissingthe tarmac is merely a pallid vestigial remnant.
Margaret AtwoodPublishers are in business to make money, and if your books do well they don't care if you are male, female, or an elephant.
Margaret AtwoodHere and there are worms, evidence of the fertility of the soil, caught by the sun, half dead; flexible and pink, like lips.
Margaret AtwoodAt the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.
Margaret AtwoodCome away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.
Margaret AtwoodYou want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones.
Margaret AtwoodScience is not something that exists apart from human beings. It's one of the things we do as human beings, and we always have done science and technology in some form.
Margaret Atwood'1984' is not a wonder tale. Not only could it happen, but it has happened, but under different names.
Margaret AtwoodThere's a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That's what writers do when they're good.
Margaret AtwoodThey spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.
Margaret AtwoodThe use of "religion" as an excuse to repress the freedom of expression and to deny human rights is not confined to any country or time.
Margaret AtwoodWhen I was young I believed that "nonfiction" meant "true." But you read a history written in, say, 1920 and a history of the same events written in 1995 and they're very different. There may not be one Truth - there may be several truths - but saying that is not to say that reality doesn't exist.
Margaret AtwoodThe young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds.
Margaret AtwoodIn the early fight for women's rights, the point was not that women were morally superior or better. The conversation was about the difference between men and women - power, privilege, voting rights, etc. Unfortunately, it quickly moved to the "women are better" argument. If this were true in life or in fiction, we wouldn't have any dark or deep characters. We wouldn't have any Salomes, Carmens, Ophelias. We wouldn't have any jealousy or passion.
Margaret AtwoodRomance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window clouded with dew. Romance means leaving things out: where life grunts and shuffles, romance only sighs.
Margaret AtwoodLove blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.
Margaret AtwoodWhy aren't we investing more in alternate tech? The Saudi Arabians are, Scottish Power is. I was just there. Could it be that we're counting on the oil going on forever and ever and ever and us having all of it and getting very rich?
Margaret AtwoodShe wasn't ready to settle down, she told her friends. That was one way of putting it. Another was would have been that she had not found anyone to settle down with. There had been several men in her life, but they hadn't been convincing. They'd been somewhat like her table - quickly acquired, brightened up a little, but temporary. The time for that kind of thing was running out, however. She was tired of renting.
Margaret AtwoodWe shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.
Margaret AtwoodRemember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.
Margaret AtwoodBut I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.
Margaret AtwoodThe Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it's a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that's unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn't blame them, having done the same once myself.
Margaret AtwoodYou quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.
Margaret AtwoodWhen you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things get in that ought to be shut out. The locks lose their powers. The guards go to sleep. The passwords fail.
Margaret AtwoodIt's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography — but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off.
Margaret AtwoodIt'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.
Margaret AtwoodYou say, The sensed absence of God and the sensed presence amount to much the same thing, only in reverse.
Margaret AtwoodDon’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.
Margaret AtwoodMake the verses flow together. If a following verse has nothing to do with the previous, you may lose our listener/reader. You want a smooth flow to hear or read, and it's easier to memorize.
Margaret Atwood