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I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle for private expression, but that it also exists for social examination. I firmly believe this.

Margaret Atwood

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Margaret Atwood
Age: 84
Born: 1939
Born: November 18
Essayist
Inventor
Literary Critic
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Ottawa (Ontario)
Margaret Eleanor Atwood
Also
Exists
Victorian
Believe
Private
Graduate
Students
Examination
Expression
Firmly
Novel
Graduates
Simply
Vehicle
Literature
Novelists
Social
Student

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

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Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.
Margaret Atwood
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If a god showed up every time you put a quarter in the prayer slot it wouldn't be God, it would be a puppet that you could control by doing that...that would make the deity subservient to you. So it wouldn't be a deity would it?
Margaret Atwood
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I’m not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don’t know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder.
Margaret Atwood
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The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wrong.
Margaret Atwood
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There's something final about saying you were married once. It's like saying you were dead once. It shuts them up.
Margaret Atwood
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A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you.
Margaret Atwood
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A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately.
Margaret Atwood
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Gravity works in your life, the notion of free will works in your life, however problematic it may at times be.
Margaret Atwood
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poetry is where the language is renewed.
Margaret Atwood
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For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it.
Margaret Atwood
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Like the trains, she's never on time and always departing.
Margaret Atwood
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Hunger is a powerful reorganizer of the conscience.
Margaret Atwood
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Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave - The water below is as dark as the grave, And maybe you'll sink in your little blue boat - It's hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat
Margaret Atwood
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for me the novel is a social vehicle, it reflects society.
Margaret Atwood
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If you want what's in the package you should at least know how to get the string off, is what I say.
Margaret Atwood
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They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.
Margaret Atwood
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Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space.
Margaret Atwood
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If a stranger taps you on the ass and says, How's the little lady today! you will probably cringe. But if he's an American, he's only being friendly.
Margaret Atwood
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It used to be that your bloodlines dictated who you were. But the U.S. became the land of the self-made man, in which not only did you make a fortune but you could make up everything else about yourself as well. You move into a new town with a spurious pedigreed background and you just make yourself up.
Margaret Atwood
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Imagine a famine. Now imagine a piece of bread. Both of these things are real but you happen to be in the same room with only one of them. Put yourself into a different room, that’s what the mind is for.
Margaret Atwood