Quote

Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee... I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

Margaret Atwood

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Margaret Atwood
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: November 18
Essayist
Inventor
Literary Critic
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Ottawa (Ontario)
Margaret Eleanor Atwood
Hold
Clues
Inside
Fist
Power
Knee
Must
Fists
Time
Clue
Like
Knees
Solutions
Close
Compressed

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... all this talking, this rather liquid confessing, was something I didn't think I could ever bring myself to do. It seemed foolhardy to me, like an uncooked egg deciding to to come out of its shell: there would be a risk of spreading out too far, turning into a formless puddle.
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This above all, to refuse to be a victim.
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Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.
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When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.
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If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.
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The truly fearless think of themselves as normal.
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Screw poetry, it’s you I want, your taste, rain on you, mouth on your skin.
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Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don't fit in?
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Stick a shovel into the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light. Good for trade, we thrive on bones without them there'd be no stories.
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To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self.
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If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?
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Children were vehicles for passing things along. These things could be kingdoms, rich wedding gifts, stories, grudges, blood feuds. Through children, alliances were forged through children, wrongs were avenged. To have a child was to set loose a force in the world.
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I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.
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The problem is huge. We've just added seventy-five million people to the already large proportion of people in the world who are malnourished all the time, whose bodies are being starved.
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Snowman wakes before dawn.
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I'm not senile, I snapped. If I burn the house down it will be on purpose.
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The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.
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There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt.
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What you get is no longer what you see.
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Karen wasn't hard, she was soft, too soft. A soft touch. Her hair was soft, her smile was soft, her voice was soft. She was so soft there was no resistance. Hard things sank into her, they went right through her, and if she made a real effort, out the other side. Then she didn't have to see them or hear them, or even touch them.
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