Second-hand American was spreading over him in patches, like mange or lichen. He was infested, garbled, and I couldn't help him: it would take such time to heal, unearth him, scrape down to where he was true.
Margaret Atwood
Related They said they got to him right away, they pulled him out. He just looked over, smiled, that was it.... DAVE ROWE He was mostly leaping tall buildings in the beginning. There were cases where he would leap off a ta... JOE SHUSTER He was going to hell in the old hand basket, and he decided that maybe he would take someone with hi... THOMAS F. MONTELEONE What would have prevented him from hitting him if that was the case? If he was trying to hit him, he... CHARMEL WARREN You all right?" he said again. I didn't love him, I was far away from him, it was as though I w... MARGARET ATWOOD He helped people. Everybody loved him because he was a good person. He tried to help everybody. It w... HERMAN PITTMAN The last time I saw him he was walking down lover's lane holding his own hand. FRED A. ALLEN He was going down, I just kind of help him. DERRIC ROSSY I held his hand. I told him I loved him for some reason. I told him he was doing good and he was goi... ASHLEY PERRY Going out there I think he was at 76 pitches. I told him he was one over 75, we'll take him up to 80... AARON NIECKULA I was riding him and he kind of faced me a little bit. He grabbed my leg and tried to roll over, but... KYLE REILLY It was terrible, and I even told the police officer when I saw him heading down, I said, 'Where are ... DANNY GARCIA It was a rite of passage. He was dad's right-hand man . . . he was just doing things like that. We m... MARILYN ADAMS I was trying to keep him down, but he was tough. I tried to bring him down with a cradle, but he sli... DEREK BENNETT With Tay, I was just trying to get a feel for him. He expressed himself candidly where he thought he... FRAN MCCAFFERY We never expected it. There was a time where he would leave, go out of town and come back. So we nev... MARIA RUVALCABA I knew he was coming. I just wanted to direct him where to slide to. We had a wild-pitch read from o... ERIC ETCHISON The last time I saw him he was walking down lover's lane holding his own hand. FRED ALLEN Every time they saw him, they recognized him and knew him and expected things of him. And every time... CASSANDRA CLARE It was the first time he had run in two weeks. He took two weeks off to heal (from a severe blister ... ERIC HASLETT He couldn't move. Running would get him killed. Fighting would get him killed. …Standing where he ... RUTH FORD ELWARD He was down to earth. In 1997 I first started making contact with him. He didn't know me from Adam..... ERIC KEY He was a fast little guy and I would be the guy trying to jab him and knock him down. DAVID BOLLAND His mom was everything. No matter where he was or what he was doing, if his mom called him he would ... BERNIE FEI Gary Cooper was a good friend. He was a great nature lover. He was like an American Indian, he knew ... RICHARD WIDMARK He looked at the viewscreen and couldn’t believe it. If the other ship were any closer, then it wo... CHRISTINA ENGELA But it was true that for the first time, he was able to comprehend that the people he had gro... HANYA YANAGIHARA It was huge for us to see him out there playing, and second of all for him to be as effective as he ... BRETT SOMMERVILLE I thought he was OK, but he stopped breathing and they had to put him on a respirator. When I was ab... CODY COLVIN He sounded like he was into it, like he felt Dr. King's spirit and what Dr. King was all about. We h... ALSAMAR DOUGLAS If I have to describe him, I would describe him as John Wayne. He was a strong person; he would just... BARBARA REILLY It was his idea to come to the fair ... and he found his grave there. I don't know which morgue he's... TADEUSZ DLUGOSZ I was known as 'Ray, Head of Security' in the bookstores and stuff where he was signing books. I jus... JOHNNY DEPP I knew he was good on his feet, so I was looking to take him down early and work from there. DANIEL MORITA He was running different routes. I don't know where he was going. He was doing a lot of verbal route... AL SCATES I called him to find out where he got the pamphlet and all he said was it was missing the label, ...... WILLIAM WATSON We just kept asking him where he was, where he was, and eventually he figured it out. KEN HITCHCOCK I think it was the right thing. I know how hard this was for him. He would like to play until he was... JERRY RICE I could tell the whole day there was something off about him. When he walked in, he wouldn't take hi... JULIA JACOB You dreaded asking him about his vacation because he would talk to you for an hour about what he did... PAMELA DIXON Rocky was solid. It was nice to see him get a nice win over a good BEA wrestler and that will only h... BRETT MICHAELS He was such an asshole, and I loved him. JENNIFER L. ARMENTROUT When he was gone in Utah we missed him a lot. He would get everyone in the back going and when he wa... LOUIS FALCON I went to see what was going on. I seen him standing on the reef, waist deep in water. He yelled, he... DAVID SMITH He was in Switzerland at the time and was coming home for a short period of time. I contacted him an... DICK AYOTTE He was fine. We would take him out if there was anything, an inkling of a twinge, anything wrong, bu... RON PETERSON He was down and out. I tried to help him, but there's only so much a coach can do. BART SCHOUTEN He would just get really upset about anything that you would say to him or try to, you know, show hi... DAVID BRADLEY Hand it to him, and he will turn away. Take it from him, and he quickly runs after it. ZENG HAN JUN He would spook every time I threw something at him. It was driving me nuts and I couldn't sleep, kno... GREG RUBIN I did not know one person who played with him or against him who didn't like him. The smile was cont... RICK AGUILERA That broke him up. That really bothered him. He felt he had to help. He was a good man. DAN KENNEDY But it was Valentine. I saw him. In fact, he had the Sword with him when he came down to the cells a... CASSANDRA CLARE He (Peel) was a wonderful person. He was a genuinely nice person, which is rare in this business. He... DAVID GEDGE The second time I held him in my arms there was no way I was going to let him go. ANNE PAIGE I saw him wide open in front of the net and gave him a backhand right there. He was able to finish i... ALEX ARTHUR I wanted to take care of him, have him move in, but he said he was heading back south. I fell in lov... WINONA RYDER He was hanging his head, his coat wouldn't turn - it was almost like he was depressed, ... Richard d... BOB BONE Santana did what he does best, he's a good pitcher and we were waiting for him to come back [out]. B... FREDERICH CEPEDA I tried to give him encouragement. At times he was down because he was used to starting. DARRENT WILLIAMS Obviously, he [dropped down] in the second, so that meant he was feeling good. I asked him [if he wa... DON COOPER My dad used to design cars, boats and vans, ... I would sit next to him from the time I was 3 and co... CHIP FOOSE My son's full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name ... DAVID BOWIE I believe she was just the angel he needed to be successful here, and help him start all over again. ANNE HOLBROOK It was him. I tackled him and hugged him. We fell to the ground. He was my son. He was my heart. . .... TERRY CARTER He wrestled with it the rest of the year, but there was a point where he wanted to quit. I was talki... CHAD POWELL He was in a place where nobody would have found him for days. CAROL ROEGNER Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter ... J.K. ROWLING I was very disappointed that he got beat the first time, but it was a 4 ½-furlong race and once he ... ELLIOTT WALDEN And he said, Go and spy where he is, that I may send and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Beh... BIBLE I'm just delighted to get my hands on him. Paul Nicholls was very good about the whole affair. He sa... GINGER MCCAIN He was my right-hand man, no question. He worked with me most of the time as my offensive line coach... BILL MARION He was an underdog all the way. It was real surprising for him to finish second. JIM JORDAN It was like he was playing in his backyard and nobody was guarding him. TUBBY SMITH I was trying to tell him to assist me. I wanted him to take the lead. He wouldn't. BENJAMIN MAIYO You didn't kill him. He would have killed you, but you didn't kill him." "So? He was stupid. If... TAMORA PIERCE When I first shook Stanley Williams' hand, I knew that he was innocent and that we'd be connected un... JAMIE FOXX I never saw him blow a sketch. But he was quite self-contained. It was hard to write collaboratively... ERIC MORECAMBE She’d fucked him over hardcore. She’d betrayed him and she’d lied to him, and she knew that as... STACIA KANE He used to hide his true self because he feared people wouldn’t like him, or would judge him for b... SCOTT STABILE I saw a guy being really abusive to his girlfriend. She was asking people to help, but no one would.... TIMOTHY HUTTON The first two or three plays he was in I was about ready to reach out and choke him. After the game,... ROY WILLIAMS Obviously I saw him trip. I thought he was going to get up. He wasn't grabbing anything, and it look... DALE SVEUM How did he get so terribly smart, so determined? Maybe it was the pain I'd caused that made him that... BROCK CLARKE He tried to hit me and missed but I didn't miss him. I was lucky I saw him at the last second. ALEXEI KOVALEV I was called by a sales rep, and he garbled his last name. When I called back and asked to speak wit... CARL KUTSMODE He would eventually have to pass through the forest, but he felt no fear. Of course - the forest was... HARUKI MURAKAMI He was a valuable asset. He always helped me with the catchers, that's where his expertise was. He w... LYNDELL ZANOTTI He was medically cleared. He's feeling better. If he felt like he would play, it was up to him. The ... BARRY WEINBERG I pushed passed him. He grabbed my hand and swung me back towards him. Then he pushed me against the... JESSICA SHIRVINGTON Tommy had completely forgotten that he was horny. He had always been horny, and had accepted that he... CHRISTOPHER MOORE As productive and brilliant as he was, he was also self-destructive, ... He said God gave him MS to ... JENNIFER LEE I said if he was willing to focus, I would help him build the best collection of its kind. DIANA LEE R.L., in real life was a lot different from how he comes off on the records, where he cusses and yel... JASON RICCI I don't usually beat him. That was the first time I ever beat him. He was kind of surprised. He was ... BLAKE SMITH He looked like like he was still favoring it a little bit this morning when he was out on the floor.... BRIAN HILL The park was the heart of the city. He had come to the city – and with a knowing in his blood – ... FLANNERY O'CONNOR I communicated with him regularly on e-mail. He was always upbeat about the war and believed in what... BOB MARIANO he called you a hoe cuz he couldnt stop thinking of you with someone else and that scared him he cal... WOW It was true that I was keen for him to stay. However I have spoken to him three or four times in Jap... GRAHAM HENRY
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 I've never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are... 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 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