My self is a thing that I must now compose...as one composes a speech. What I must present is a 'made' thing. Not something born.


Margaret Atwood

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Politics is a good thing!
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Caffeine is a good thing.
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For me, life is a bowl of cherries.
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Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
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Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.
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There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.
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In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as po...
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Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on you...
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Sauve qui peut. To survive
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Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that.
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She finds this objectivity of hers, this clarity, almost more depressing than she can bear, not beca...
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Many believed what they were told: that the welfare of the entire kingdom depended on their selfless...
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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