The thing about delirium is you think it's great, but it actually isn't.


Margaret Atwood

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Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.
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Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
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If i thought this would never happen again I would die.
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Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.
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Never pray for justice, because you might get some.
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Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
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We understand more than we know.
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Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.
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that do not lo...
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'1984' is not a wonder tale. Not only could it happen, but it has happened, but under differ...
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A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there's less of you.
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The truly fearless think of themselves as normal.
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The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.
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I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months...
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If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never a...
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Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn?
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But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No ...
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Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.
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Our problem right now is that we're so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge n...
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There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.
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Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tootin...
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Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide...
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Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window cloud...
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Modesty is invisibility...Never forget it. To be seen—to be seen—is to be...penetrated. W...
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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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But how can you have a sense of wonder if you’re prepared for everything?
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Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, scho...
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A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness.
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The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wron...
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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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Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a ...
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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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She did understand, or at least she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, ...
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When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be whe...
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Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide...
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I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing...
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What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams...
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There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's somethin...
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I believe that everyone else my age is an adult whereas I am merely in disguise.
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How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness...
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You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly f...
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Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you sa...
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You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t ne...
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But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion....
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When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things ...
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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