You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.
Margaret Atwood
Related The outcome would have been the same. I think he would have played his cards and lost again. GREELEY WELLS This is the national equivalent of having no savings, your credit card maxed out, you didn't renew y... DIANA DEGETTE The railroads are maxed out. DAVID FEIDER He would have spoken out, ... He would not have hesitated to call for some type of immediate action. CHARLOTTE OBSERVER I would say Mr. Prospector for instance, who was not as fashionable on the track, if he stood today ... DAN ROSENBERG We maxed out on the setbacks. ALEX HANNIGAN If he was being burned, he would have cried out. He would yell out and let them know he was in pain.... LINDA HARRIS Consumers are more maxed out on credit than they were at this time last year. PEARL KAMER From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created... HOWARD DEAN There are two things in life you cannot choose. The first is your enemies; the second your family. S... CARLOS RUIZ ZAFóN We're pretty well maxed out. BRIAN MCCURDY We're convinced that he would have kept his leader's jersey had he not crashed. You don't take the y... JOHAN BRUYNEEL I was shy. Bookish. The kind of 13-year-old girl who, instead of having a boyfriend, would have a cr... NATALIE MERCHANT He would have been busting out of his shirt. I hope he still is. BETTY BLAKE I don't think you can ever question the decision that your boss makes. If he would have said 'race' ... DANICA PATRICK my grandfather would have loved to have met you," Charles told her huskily. "He would have called yo... PATRICIA BRIGGS Words don’t take you anywhere, at the most they aid in a mental projection; it’s the experience ... RAMANA PEMMARAJU Why is it that we want what we don't have, yet we can't see what we do have? ANTHONY T. HINCKS If she had loved him, he would have opened windows, allowed all of that precious light of hers in sh... AMANDA LANCE What the Dalai Lama had to resolve was whether to stay in Tibet or leave. He wanted to stay, but sta... MARTIN SCORSESE Our bid is maxed out. We could not do any more. GARY STOKAN Just think how much poorer we would be today if the world would have had half as many people in the ... ROBERT ZUBRIN Obviously, some temporary stuff would have been pulled out, but anything permanent would have stayed... ALBERT CARLSON It would have totally irritated me. We would have said we're out of the deal. KATHY COLLINS Theory of Constipation:
No offense Mr. Newton - but if I would be you.... I would have proved theory... ELECTROJIT If you announced a shelter, what we would have had is people who were fearful would have rushed to t... FRANK MICHEL Canceling the tour would have been bad news for everybody. Nothing good would have come out of it. O... DAVID SCHOENBRUN If you'd have told me 10 years ago that one of the biggest new phenomena of the 21st century was peo... ROBERT THOMPSON The one thing I wish would have happened was we would have scored one more run for Milton. I wish he... RICH AURILIA Just because you haven't got a home, doesn't make you homeless. and Just because you don't... ANTHONY T. HINCKS The folks owed money would have a lien on the building, so they would have security for the payment ... JEFF MACPHERSON She would have her ship and he would have his city. LEIGH BARDUGO We would rather not have wardens driving in from long distances. We would rather have wardens who ar... GERALD MASSENGILL It's impossible to say whether a life jacket would have made a difference for Mr. Seidel, but certai... DAN TREDINNICK Mr. Dreier would have had to give up his chairmanship of the Rules Committee to move to another posi... JO MANEY There is no precedent for this, but there is no question who put this situation in motion. If they d... CHRISTOPHER MCGRATH I don't think I would have been great in the 17th century. I would have enjoyed the frocks, and ... PETER CAPALDI They would have liked to be rich. They believed they would have been up to it. They would have known... GEORGES PEREC Because of Jesus’ supposed predestination, God would have had to choose the people who would kill ... DAVID G. MCAFEE There is no identification of this individual put out. If I would have done it, my picture would be ... JIM CARTER We were told that if we didn't [contribute], they were going to have to do without the bleachers and... CAROL PAGE We were told that if we didn't [contribute], they were going to have to do without the bleachers and... CAROL PAGE There is no question it would have taken some of their luster away had we lost the base. TONY SHERIDAN It's raised as a question mark that the thought of a gun may have averted her attempted rape. It wou... ERICH PRATT Strength is not something you have, it's something you find. EMMA SMITH Words have a taste, sweet but subtle, like dark chocolate; the scent of old bookshops; a flamenco rh... CHLOE THURLOW To believe in something can be inspiration for many people .To believe is to have faith in what you ... GARY F EVANS... What do people fear most about death? I asked the reb. "Fear?" he thought for a moment. 'Well, ... MITCH ALBOM Love- the infatuation kind- 'he's so handsome, she's so beautiful'- that can shrivel. As soon as som... MITCH ALBOM If you stopped yourself every time you said "I have to", and changed it to "I get to" it might chang... KYLE PAGERLY Happiness is wanting what you have instead of wanting what you don't have. LORRIN L. LEE You can BE, DO, and HAVE ...absolutely ANYTHING you really, really want to BE, DO, and HAVE. LORRIN L. LEE We tend to not appreciate what we have until we lose it. LORRIN L. LEE Now they have a riddle. - Criminal Minds DEYTH BANGER Pathetic is when you assume the worst, because you are incapable of thinking beyond your own mental ... EMMA PAUL Those who hate, are merely wallowing in self pity. Those who lie about someone to destroy his or her... EMMA PAUL Words have power," Isaac answered. Words begin and end wars. They create and destroy families. They ... LORI HANDELAND It would have been in the bag from the beginning. That kid can jump out of the gym. JACKIE MANUEL From their point of view, I had gone too far. I had to disappear. That is to say, if the Algerian ar... AHMED BEN BELLA Your story matters. The thoughts you think matter. The words you use matter. It can be the differenc... KRISTIN RATH I think Mr. Bah can give students an understanding of Sierra Leone they would not have gotten from t... GABRIEL DUPREE If I would have backed up a foot, I'd have been out of her way. DALE ARMSTRONG We expected a good number of people would come out to meet Mr. Sanders and get the cards, but nowher... DICK ROBERTS Oh! that look of love!" continued he, between his teeth, as he bolted himself into his own private r... ELIZABETH GASKELL
He knows that if his father had been a different man, or his mother another women, he would have ... R.A.LUCAS No seventeenth-century pedagogue would have publicly advised his disciple, as did Erasmus in his Dia... MICHEL FOUCAULT If I have no children what would be the point of living. SHEENA EASTON You’ve got a lot of responsibility now,” Jace said to Julian. “You’ll have to make sure Emma... CASSANDRA CLARE You really want to make sure that you have fun, at the end of the day. If it's not fun, what'... AYELET ZURER I was reading the throw. He would have been out. DAVE TREMBLEY This would not cause an increase in taxes. Hopefully, we can avoid the issue of taxing for the next ... JEFF MCCLELLAND A lot of times we played right into their hands. I feel if I would have played halfway decent we wou... MAURICE AGER At some point you have to publish. You can't sit there waiting for every last piece of information, ... MARTIN BARON It would have worked out great. Nobody would have been able to double team Tyler because Sean would ... ROY WILLIAMS Look, we would have loved to have won the ballgame, no question about it, BRIAN PRICE Who would have thought that vaunted Chicago defense would have given up 29? JULIUS PEPPERS For the Jesus Revolutionaries, the answer was clear: Jesus would not be out waging "preventative" wa... DAVID LEVITHAN The whole thing fell in like an accordion, ... Anybody who was out in that room would have been dead... CHARLES SPENCER The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people... EZRA TAFT BENSON You have to give them credit for taking Shaun out of the game. We didn't force-feed Shaun. We though... WENDELL JEFFRIES Maybe we would grow apart, he would develop a personality that I would know nothing about, we would ... JENNY ZHANG Why be greedy when you can have it all. ANTHONY T. HINCKS Having riches ultimately means having few needs. J.R. RIM She probably would have gone back out there tonight. But why risk it at this point in time? To put h... CAREY GREEN Who would have known Gabe Scott would have that type of year? We need someone to step up this year l... JIM WELLS You can't deal with being odd? ... Become like them... Become drug delear... DEYTH BANGER Never did he once consider directing his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destr... TONI MORRISON If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive. ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE Duncan asked me a question he probably shouldn't have asked, ... If Tony had a question, he should h... RICK WHITE Not even Tombaugh and his mentors could have forecast how fascinating their new planet would turn ou... ALAN STERN I would love to talk to Twain and find out what he would say. I think he would have a real fun twink... CHRIS PACKARD No other city would have gotten the best out of Reggie Miller. Thank you so much for helping him to ... CHERYL MILLER We can't absorb the whole cost of an engine. But we did offer to reduce what our rates would be but ... MARK MEDINGER People would ask me, 'Is he as funny at home as he is in the movies?' ... I would have to answer, 'W... ARTHUR MARX Did I get jiggy with Will? I would have to say no! Did I have fun with Will? I would have to say yea... BRUCE GREENWOOD Sink the Bible to the bottom of the sea, and man's obligation to God would be unchanged. He would ha... HENRY WARD BEECHER Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own. MARK TWAIN Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own. RAOUL VANEIGEM Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own. RAOUL VANEIGEM Had he walked in at 1:30, he would have signed his bond. Probably the court and the marshal service ... JOE DINATALE
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 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 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