Please don't make the mistake of thinking that 'Oryx and Crake' is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it's neutral.
Margaret AtwoodCanadians are fond of a good disaster, especially if it has ice, water, or snow in it. You thought the national flag was about a leaf, didn't you? Look harder. It's where someone got axed in the snow.
Margaret AtwoodSometimes reactions can be quite surprising: readers like things that you, the author, feel you've barely gotten away with; or they dislike one of the parts you secretly think is one of your little gems.
Margaret AtwoodWater does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.
Margaret AtwoodOnce upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.
Margaret AtwoodIt is my contention that the process of reading is part of the process of writing, the necessary completion without which writing can hardly be said to exist.
Margaret AtwoodTouch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.
Margaret AtwoodReligions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are described as equals. If you walk into a cathedral and look at the decorations of early Christianity, there are vines, animals, creatures and birds thriving all over the stonework.
Margaret AtwoodMary Baker Eddy is said to have had a phone installed in her coffin just in case she happened to wake up. I've been told that's an urban myth. Somebody should check it out.
Margaret AtwoodThis has been her problem all her life: picturing other people's responses. She's too good at it. She can picture the response of anyone--other people's reactions, their emotions, their criticisms, their demands--but somehow they don't reciprocate. Maybe they can't. Maybe they lack the gift, if it is one.
Margaret AtwoodBecause you may think a bed is a peaceful thing, Sir, and to you it may mean rest and comfort and a good night's sleep. But it isn't so for everyone; and there are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed.
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 AtwoodAll you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.
Margaret AtwoodGenres aren't closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.
Margaret AtwoodHis father was self-made, but his mother was constructed by others, and such edifices are notoriously fragile.
Margaret AtwoodShe imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation. In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he said, what she said, what they did, what they did then. Even the times they argued, fought, parted, agonized, rejoined. How they’d loved to cut themselves on each other, taste their own blood. We were ruinous together, she thinks. But how else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin?
Margaret AtwoodI'm with the spirit of Earth-Day-yet-to-come. Nobody can really predict the future, all you can do is look at trends, and that could change at any moment.
Margaret AtwoodFiction is not necessarily about what you know, it's about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel.
Margaret AtwoodDoes feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings. To me it's the latter, so I sign up
Margaret AtwoodIf he wants to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before him have made the same life choice.
Margaret AtwoodWhen I was 16 I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines. My main feedback came from my English teacher, Miss Bessie B. Billings, who said, 'I can't understand this at all, dear, so it must be good.
Margaret AtwoodI think the main thing is: Just do it. Plunge in! Being Canadian, I go swimming in icy cold lakes, and there is always that dithering moment. "Am I really going to do this? Won't it hurt?" And at some point you just have to flop in there and scream. Once you're in, keep going. You may have to crumple and toss, but we all do that. Courage! I think that is what's most required.
Margaret AtwoodMen are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.
Margaret AtwoodDon't eat anything you aren't prepared to kill. Don't kill anything you aren't prepared to eat.
Margaret AtwoodOne and one and one and one doesn't equal four. Each one remains unique, there is no way of joining them together. They cannot be exchanged, one for the other. They cannot replace each other.
Margaret AtwoodI'm not an activist by nature. I am suspicious of Utopian thinking and equally suspicious of its alternate. I would prefer to stay in the Writing Burrow and play with my imaginary friends and enemies. I get sucked into these things.
Margaret AtwoodHow old do you have to get before wisdom descends like a plastic bag over your head and you learn to keep your big mouth shut? Maybe never. Maybe you get more frivolous with age.
Margaret AtwoodIn the evenings there's been thunder, a distant bumping and stumbling, like God on a sullen binge.
Margaret AtwoodAs we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter.
Margaret AtwoodIf it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending... But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one.
Margaret AtwoodIn the First World War, people would be receiving letters from loved ones who had been dead for weeks, and they would not know until that black-bordered telegram arrived. I remember, of course, when it was letters only, or the telephone, and you did not make expensive long-distance calls unless it was, "Come home to the funeral," or the like.
Margaret AtwoodSo much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with. That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.
Margaret AtwoodAll it takes,” said Crake, “is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.
Margaret AtwoodI sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing…. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black.
Margaret AtwoodVampires get the joy of flying around and living forever, werewolves get the joy of animal spirits. But zombies, they're not rich, or aristocratic, they shuffle around. They're a group phenomenon, they're not very fast, they're quite sickly. So what's the pleasure of being one?
Margaret AtwoodThe fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly.
Margaret AtwoodNight falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it’s heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket.
Margaret Atwood