Quote

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.

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
Done
Anyone
Happenings
Drowning
Even
Wrong
Wave
Inadequate
Something
Lying
Faults
Nothingness
Like
Whatever
Happening
Bedroom
Numbness
Wells
Worth
Emptiness
Sluggish
Might
Stupid
Fault
Detachment
Without
Dead
Drawn
Washing
Well
Huge
Depression
Curtains

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

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Whatever the scientists may come up with, writers and artists will continue to portray altered mental states, simply because few aspects of our nature fascinate people so much. The so-called mad person will always represent a possible future for every member of the audience - who knows when such a malady may strike?
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Why do men feel threatened by women?
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Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.
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A truth should exist, it should not be used like this. If I love you is that a fact or a weapon?
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Debt is part of the human condition. Civilization is based on exchanges - on gifts, trades, loans - and the revenges and insults that come when they are not paid back.
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I did ... learn an important distinction in graduate school: a speculation about who had syphilis when is gossip if it's about your friends, a plot element if it's about a character in a novel, and scholarship if it's about John Keats.
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This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love.
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There is so much going on all over the world that it's impossible for one person to keep up. And I can't.
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Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.
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For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.... I think it's very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don't know where it'll go.
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My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way.
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Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.
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Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.
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There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.
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I feel like the word shatter.
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What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.
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It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography — but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off.
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I tried to visualize my jealousy as a yellowy-brown cloud boiling around inside me, then going out through my nose like smoke and turning into a stone and falling down into the ground. That did work a little. But in my visualization a plant covered with poison berries would grow out of the stone, whether I wanted it to or not.
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Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings...but there’s something dead about it, something deserted.
Margaret Atwood
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There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits.
Margaret Atwood