I've never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn't mean they're going to be that way.
Margaret Atwood
Related I think anyone who doesn't say that they'd like people to think that they're doing the r... DAVID STERN I mean people just have a way of - y'know they'll review your record in two sentences and pu... ELLIOTT SMITH We all die, it's a fact that today you aren't here, yesterday you weren't here doesn't mean that tom... DEYTH BANGER I study pitchers. I visualize pitches. That gives me a better chance every time I step into the box.... MARK MCGWIRE I don't fit neatly into anybody's political boxes, and I think that sometimes disturbs peopl... LISA MURKOWSKI I've got a really great team around me. They're the ones that are in the restaurants on a da... TODD ENGLISH The words I'm singing now
Mean nothing more than meow to an animal THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS Just because two guys are homosexual and happen to be the only two homosexuals on-screen doesn't... CHANDLER MASSEY As a coach, they would love to sit there and say, 'It's going to be five steps, you're g... BRETT FAVRE Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS More than any woman I ever knew, she comforted.' -Mrs. Huxley about Emma DEBORAH HEILIGMAN That's silly,' said Martha. 'Friends should always tell each other the truth. JAMES MARSHALL Kindness is the essence of greatness and the fundamental characteristic of the noblest men and women... JOSEPH B. WIRTHLIN In this long eternal quest to be more like our Savior, may we try to be “perfect” men and women ... JEFFREY R. HOLLAND And we learned that you don't have to be famous or rich or physically healthy to be a leader. You ju... JOAN BAUER There is no tomorrow to remember if we don’t do something today, and to live most fully today, we ... THOMAS S. MONSON Beauty—real everlasting beauty—lives not on our faces, but in our attitude and our actions. It l... JUSTINA CHEN I've never looked at myself and said that I need to be a certain way to be around a certain sort... JAY-Z I think that people have expectations of themselves and other people that are based on these fiction... CHARLIE KAUFMAN I've often heard people say that managing creative people is the hardest thing in the world. ... JOHN LASSETER I've never bought this idea of taking a therapeutic distance. If I see a student or house staff ... ABRAHAM VERGHESE I think that it helps that I have acted. That said, it doesn't mean you're going to be a goo... VALERIA GOLINO I don't want to be 'box-office girl,' but I don't want to be 'that indie girl... KIRSTEN DUNST I don't like to sing things that just sound like they're going straight down the tubes, and ... JAKOB DYLAN I had a real good thing going for me, and I got sidetracked. It doesn't have to be that way. It ... KEN CAMINITI This is what customers pay us for - to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for the... STEVE JOBS I learn from Larry Ellison every day. I've said this before: how is it to work with someone who ... SAFRA A. CATZ So this is going to be drill!? DEYTH BANGER I've never been like Angelina Jolie, who at one time was spewing out this prototype Bad Girl stu... JULIETTE LEWIS A lot of people believe, and I do at times, that some of our trade agreements are lopsided, and we... RICHARD SHELBY That's the way this business works: if your movies do well at the box office, you will be offere... MATT DAMON Sometimes you'll see people give performances in comedy with an ironic detachment where they'... ZACH WOODS One of the things I've learned from 'Borgen' is that it's very easy to criticise peo... PILOU ASBAEK I don't have any interest in being in Warner Brothers' newest comedy if it's going to su... LEVI DYLAN I don't treat the band like I'm above them or that they're a hired hand for me. We'v... TOM PETTY Being on TV brings a sort of attention in high school that can be negative sometimes. People, immedi... CHARLOTTE ARNOLD I see all these old people who don't have anything to do but eat, drink and sleep. I will never ... MARIO ANDRETTI People say you should do it this way, someone else suggests that, yes, there's financing, but ma... MARTIN SCORSESE I think that people have to reward those individuals who are prepared to work across the political a... ANGUS KING You've got to be picky in this business - if you're not, then I don't think you have the... AARON PAUL I do hope to be an adult actor. But if it doesn't work out, I've been thinking about doing s... NATHAN KRESS I don't put a girl in a box and clap my hands three times, and she's gone. I get in the box,... DOUG HENNING Success doesn't mean that you are healthy, success doesn't mean that you're happy, succe... VICTORIA PRINCIPAL Sports have become increasingly more specialized, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be fu... MIA HAMM If you have a government that is elected, they need to do the hard work - because if they don't,... ABDULLAH II OF JORDAN I don't make movies thinking: 'Oh, this is going to be a huge box-office hit.' DIANE KRUGER It's an important point to make that people can't just be invalidated, eradicated, because t... LINDSAY DUNCAN Men aren't the way they are because they want to drive women crazy; they've been trained to ... BARBARA DE ANGELIS One phrase I would dearly like to consign to the can is 'Out of the Box.' The thinking that ... TINA BROWN It doesn't benefit me to lie to people. They're eventually going to find out the truth, and ... RUSH LIMBAUGH There aren't many hitters who like facing knuckleball pitchers. They may not be intimidated by t... PHIL NIEKRO Lana Turner was adorable and funny. Jimmy Stewart was such a nice person. I quickly realized that if... ROBERT OSBORNE I'm all about the crossover. The role doesn't necessarily have to be white or Latina or blac... RUTINA WESLEY The important thing is this Just because I'm doing well doesn't mean that they're going ... MAGIC JOHNSON So many people witness atrocities and can't take their eyes away from them, but that doesn't... ADAM LEVINE I'm a crier. I always cry. I cry at the dumbest things, too. This is why I sort of steer clear o... YVONNE STRAHOVSKI I've met graduating college kids facing loan payments and a bad economy, and they are worried th... MITT ROMNEY I do love situational comedy, clowning, and slapstick; I approach that with a lot of respect. The go... JAIME CAMIL The last season of 'Rescue Me' is going to be very sort of half and half: it's how you t... CALLIE THORNE Like the vital rudder of a ship, we have been provided a way to determine the direction we travel. T... THOMAS S. MONSON There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the p... EPICTETUS We must be more and more to each other, my dear wife.' -Charles Darwin to wife Emma upon loss of dau... DEBORAH HEILIGMAN I wish you knew how I value you; and what an inexpressible blessing it is to have one whom one can a... DEBORAH HEILIGMAN There's always that stigma of, 'Women shouldn't box,' or stereotypes of what a femal... MANDY BUJOLD The day I decided I didn't want to be a 19th-Century European curator, I knew I would never have... THELMA GOLDEN Many creative people are finding that creativity doesn't grow in abundance, it grows from scarci... JORGEN VIG KNUDSTORP Are you taking us to the beach?" - Dan Cahill JUDE WATSON I've been in very many situations where I've not liked the other members of the band or they... JOHN LYDON You don't have to dislike people you disagree with and it doesn't mean you shouldn't be ... DAVE OBEY The person who lets them get you down, any kind of problem, is the person that fades out. So you'... TOM BENSON I've actually tried to roast somebody that I don't like, and it doesn't go well. Either ... JEFF ROSS It's like Forrest Gump said, 'Life is like a box of chocolates.' Your career is like a b... NICK CARTER The older people that one admires seem to be fearless. They go right out into the world. It's as... JAMES HILLMAN I never place limits on the potential success of my students. If they're going into acting, they... ALAN DERSHOWITZ Moderate doesn't mean that you're a wimp - far from it. It means that you've chosen a pa... NAJIB RAZAK There are many people who probably don't agree with my acting, and it should be that way: they d... ALIA BHATT Acceptance doesn't mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and tha... MICHAEL J. FOX Teen problem novels? I can go through them like a box of chocolates. And there are fantasy books out... TAMORA PIERCE You don't have to look like an Under Armour mannequin to be an athlete. A lot of people probably... PRINCE FIELDER Rock and roll doesn't necessarily mean a band. It doesn't mean a singer, and it doesn't ... MALCOLM MCLAREN People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your ... H. JACKSON BROWN, JR. I've learned never to expect people to be better than they are, but to always have faith that th... LARRY HARVEY Anybody who sits down to write, and they think 'thriller,' maybe shouldn't be thinking t... DAVID MORRELL Young people have decided they like to listen to music in a certain way, through ear buds, and that&... PRINCE If they're not temperamental, I don't want them. It's in the nature of a great artist to... SOL HUROK I've been saying for a couple of years now that people need to let God out of the Sunday morning... JOYCE MEYER I think the problem with people, as they start to mature, they say, 'Rap is a young man's ga... JAY-Z In any area of human endeavour, there is going to be mediocrity. You're going to find people who... BILL BRYSON The two men had a conversation. Brief, cryptic, to the point. As though they had exchanged numbers a... ARUNDHATI ROY I'm just not into trying to convince people like me. I always say to myself, 'It is what it ... NENE LEAKES People that are 40, they don't sit around at talk about gray hair and how it covers their hair. ... ANDIE MACDOWELL I'm 19, and, being a public figure, I'm supposed to present myself in a certain way, but it&... KRISTEN STEWART I don't like the idea of 'I've played nine years, I've made some All-Star teams, I m... MATT HOLLIDAY Anytime you're going to take your Marines into harm's way, they are looking for leadership t... LORETTA REYNOLDS I didn't think Comfort and Joy was going to be a box-office smash. BILL FORSYTH The sad heart needs work to do. JOAN BAUER Life is like a box of crayons. Most people are the 8-color boxes, but what you're really looking... JOHN MAYER People will make mean comments. People are going to say that you're fat, that you're this, t... ASHLEY BENSON The Taliban has not, in my judgment, in any significant way changed their fundamental goal and objec... JACK KEANE You have this impression from England that New Yorkers can be quite aggressive, but certainly the pe... ARCHIE PANJABI
More Margaret Atwood
Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome. MARGARET ATWOOD Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I'm a realist. MARGARET ATWOOD Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they ... MARGARET ATWOOD A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you. MARGARET ATWOOD If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schiz... MARGARET ATWOOD The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many... MARGARET ATWOOD An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness. MARGARET ATWOOD If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word. MARGARET ATWOOD Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space be... MARGARET ATWOOD I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did,... MARGARET ATWOOD When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely. MARGARET ATWOOD You're never going to kill storytelling, because it's built into the human plan. We come wit... MARGARET ATWOOD Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no yo... MARGARET ATWOOD Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do ... MARGARET ATWOOD Don't let the bastards grind you down. MARGARET ATWOOD When you can't tell the difference between your own pleasure and your pain then you're an addict. MARGARET ATWOOD The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but ... MARGARET ATWOOD Once upon a time you could wander around one country, then the next and then maybe you'd go to Engla... MARGARET ATWOOD They've removed anything you can tie a rope to. MARGARET ATWOOD Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all... MARGARET ATWOOD No one knows what cuases an outer landscape to become an inner one. MARGARET ATWOOD The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for ... MARGARET ATWOOD Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you c... MARGARET ATWOOD Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories,... MARGARET ATWOOD Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells ... MARGARET ATWOOD Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results. MARGARET ATWOOD Longed for him. Got him. Shit. MARGARET ATWOOD If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you ... MARGARET ATWOOD But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind eve... MARGARET ATWOOD I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed an... MARGARET ATWOOD I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until yo... MARGARET ATWOOD If i thought this would never happen again I would die. But this is wrong, nobody dies from lac... MARGARET ATWOOD Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic... MARGARET ATWOOD That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even an... MARGARET ATWOOD There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet a... MARGARET ATWOOD We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of pr... MARGARET ATWOOD But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it... MARGARET ATWOOD Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Wat... MARGARET ATWOOD Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself. MARGARET ATWOOD The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for lo... MARGARET ATWOOD A word after a word after a word is power. MARGARET ATWOOD I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because the... MARGARET ATWOOD She even had a kind of special position among men: she was an exception, she fitted none of the cate... MARGARET ATWOOD Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful; the secret depths of human nature, the ... MARGARET ATWOOD The basic Female body comes with the following accessories: garter belt, panty-girdle, crinoline, ca... MARGARET ATWOOD Never pray for justice, because you might get some. MARGARET ATWOOD If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least h... MARGARET ATWOOD I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and... MARGARET ATWOOD A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you MARGARET ATWOOD Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD War is what happens when language fails. MARGARET ATWOOD Miranda nods, because she knows that to be true: noble people don't do things for the money, they si... MARGARET ATWOOD Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. MARGARET ATWOOD This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love. MARGARET ATWOOD I'm a strict, strict agnostic. It's very different from a casual, 'I don't know.'... MARGARET ATWOOD Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-size... MARGARET ATWOOD Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. P... MARGARET ATWOOD I hate to tell you this, but you will never actually go to a galaxy far, far away and encounter Dart... MARGARET ATWOOD Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are describe... MARGARET ATWOOD The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose. MARGARET ATWOOD In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. MARGARET ATWOOD I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think. MARGARET ATWOOD Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada,... MARGARET ATWOOD Sometimes there would be couples, arm in arm—laughing, happy, amorous. Victims of an enormous frau... MARGARET ATWOOD Was this a betrayal, or was it an act of courage? Perhaps both. Neither one involves forethought: su... MARGARET ATWOOD The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is... MARGARET ATWOOD Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee... I hold inside it the clues and solutions and ... MARGARET ATWOOD They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it mark... MARGARET ATWOOD Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, ... MARGARET ATWOOD If you're put on a pedestal, you're supposed to behave yourself like a pedestal type of pers... MARGARET ATWOOD If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People... MARGARET ATWOOD I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually b... MARGARET ATWOOD Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the bow and arrow. MARGARET ATWOOD Vampires get the joy of flying around and living forever, werewolves get the joy of animal spirits. ... MARGARET ATWOOD Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays. MARGARET ATWOOD You will always have partial points of view, and you'll always have the story behind the story t... MARGARET ATWOOD Canada was built on dead beavers. MARGARET ATWOOD How shrunk, how dwindled, in our times Creation's mighty seed - For Man has broke the Fell... MARGARET ATWOOD She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation. In spirit she walks the city, traces its... MARGARET ATWOOD You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself. MARGARET ATWOOD Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I c... MARGARET ATWOOD Gardening is not a rational act. MARGARET ATWOOD Second-hand American was spreading over him in patches, like mange or lichen. He was infested, garbl... MARGARET ATWOOD وقتی دردپایان می یابد،دیگر در یاد چه کسی می ماند؟ تنها �... MARGARET ATWOOD We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. MARGARET ATWOOD If social stability goes pear-shaped, you have a choice between anarchy and dictatorship. Most peopl... MARGARET ATWOOD When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling ti... MARGARET ATWOOD We understand more than we know. MARGARET ATWOOD Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down. MARGARET ATWOOD You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their cred... MARGARET ATWOOD You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people's command of English - that'... MARGARET ATWOOD If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I wa... MARGARET ATWOOD Girl Without Hands Walking through the ruins on your way to work that do not lo... MARGARET ATWOOD '1984' is not a wonder tale. Not only could it happen, but it has happened, but under differ... MARGARET ATWOOD The thing about delirium is you think it's great, but it actually isn't. MARGARET ATWOOD We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we're so dependent on ... MARGARET ATWOOD I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka. MARGARET ATWOOD A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there's less of you. MARGARET ATWOOD The truly fearless think of themselves as normal. MARGARET ATWOOD Or perhaps she's just softening me up: she's a Baptist, she'd like me to find Jesus, or vice versa, ... MARGARET ATWOOD Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing ove... MARGARET ATWOOD When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like ... MARGARET ATWOOD My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one ... MARGARET ATWOOD The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth. MARGARET ATWOOD I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months... MARGARET ATWOOD If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never a... MARGARET ATWOOD Debt is part of the human condition. Civilization is based on exchanges - on gifts, trades, loans - ... MARGARET ATWOOD I particularly like Twitter, because it's short and can be very funny and informative. It's ... MARGARET ATWOOD I do have a life,' says Charis, blinking wet eyes. 'You have a rich inner life,' says Ton... MARGARET ATWOOD Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? MARGARET ATWOOD No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the... MARGARET ATWOOD We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of pr... MARGARET ATWOOD But despite everything, we didn't do badly by one another, we did as well as most. I wish she were h... MARGARET ATWOOD But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No ... MARGARET ATWOOD Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some. MARGARET ATWOOD Our problem right now is that we're so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge n... MARGARET ATWOOD There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind. MARGARET ATWOOD Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tootin... MARGARET ATWOOD Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide... MARGARET ATWOOD Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window cloud... MARGARET ATWOOD Modesty is invisibility...Never forget it. To be seen—to be seen —is to be...penetrated. W... MARGARET ATWOOD In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as po... MARGARET ATWOOD Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on you... MARGARET ATWOOD Sauve qui peut. To survive we’d all turn thief and rascal, or so says the fox, MARGARET ATWOOD Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that. MARGARET ATWOOD But how can you have a sense of wonder if you’re prepared for everything? MARGARET ATWOOD Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, scho... MARGARET ATWOOD A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness. MARGARET ATWOOD The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wron... MARGARET ATWOOD She finds this objectivity of hers, this clarity, almost more depressing than she can bear, not beca... MARGARET ATWOOD Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a ... MARGARET ATWOOD Many believed what they were told: that the welfare of the entire kingdom depended on their selfless... MARGARET ATWOOD She did understand, or at least she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, ... MARGARET ATWOOD When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be whe... MARGARET ATWOOD We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something harmful, t... MARGARET ATWOOD Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide... MARGARET ATWOOD I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing... MARGARET ATWOOD Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you... MARGARET ATWOOD What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams... MARGARET ATWOOD There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's somethin... MARGARET ATWOOD I believe that everyone else my age is an adult whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness... MARGARET ATWOOD The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied... MARGARET ATWOOD You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly f... MARGARET ATWOOD Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you sa... MARGARET ATWOOD You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t ne... MARGARET ATWOOD But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion.... MARGARET ATWOOD When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things ... MARGARET ATWOOD Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert... MARGARET ATWOOD It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and set... MARGARET ATWOOD The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds. MARGARET ATWOOD I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose. MARGARET ATWOOD She knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy. MARGARET ATWOOD Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, t... MARGARET ATWOOD Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert... MARGARET ATWOOD Home is where the heart is, I thought now, gathering myself together in Betty's Luncheonette. I had ... MARGARET ATWOOD Should is a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It... MARGARET ATWOOD What is it the I'll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which i... MARGARET ATWOOD There were a lot of gods. Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. MARGARET ATWOOD Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. They hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so... MARGARET ATWOOD Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the brig... MARGARET ATWOOD The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by ... MARGARET ATWOOD There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication. MARGARET ATWOOD The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one. MARGARET ATWOOD Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Secon... MARGARET ATWOOD Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. MARGARET ATWOOD We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy? MARGARET ATWOOD The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betr... MARGARET ATWOOD Put yourself in a different room, that's what the mind is for. MARGARET ATWOOD The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose MARGARET ATWOOD I think of this as a democratizing device. MARGARET ATWOOD I'm curious. If someone says 'Don't open that door', I'm right there! MARGARET ATWOOD The main thing is to keep yourself awake [on writing] MARGARET ATWOOD For years I wanted to be older, and now I am. MARGARET ATWOOD He's very in depth, on the dark side. He's interested in structure and how things work. After readin... MARGARET ATWOOD The Orange prize has been pivotal in the careers of many women writers - it's given them that extra ... MARGARET ATWOOD Just think of it as a very, very long pen. MARGARET ATWOOD Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked; as I never was when I was not one MARGARET ATWOOD This above all, to refuse to be a victim. MARGARET ATWOOD We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups. MARGARET ATWOOD A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. MARGARET ATWOOD Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are hum... MARGARET ATWOOD They all disowned their parents long ago, the way you are supposed to MARGARET ATWOOD You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer. MARGARET ATWOOD Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the Un... MARGARET ATWOOD Any death is stupid from the viewpoint of whoever is undergoing it, Adam One used to say, because no... MARGARET ATWOOD Also I could hear Amanda’s voice: Why are you being so weak? Love’s never a fair trade. So Jimmy... MARGARET ATWOOD I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices,... MARGARET ATWOOD Life is warped. I'm just in sync. MARGARET ATWOOD I thought everyone would be familiar with this figure: if I'd studied a thing in school I assumed it... MARGARET ATWOOD We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves. MARGARET ATWOOD My parents are like younger, urchinlike brothers and sisters whose faces are dirty and who blurt out... MARGARET ATWOOD Now we come to forgiveness. Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important thing... MARGARET ATWOOD Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe. MARGARET ATWOOD Human tool-makers always make tools that will help us get what we want, and what we want hasn't chan... MARGARET ATWOOD She doesn't think it's a good idea to know the future, because you can hardly ever change it, so why... MARGARET ATWOOD The possibility of injury or death was a strong attraction: as the online world became more and more... MARGARET ATWOOD My self is a thing that I must now compose...as one composes a speech. What I must present is a 'mad... MARGARET ATWOOD