Quote

I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over.

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
Fear
Edge
Night
Edges
Come
Hearing
Washed
Nothing
Cry
Pushed
Afraid
Hanging
Land
Sanity
Lying
Floor
Voice
Voices

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But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.
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I grew up amongst biologists.
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All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.
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My own view of myself was that I was small and innocuous, a marshmallow compared to the others. I was a poor shot with a 22, for instance, and not very good with an ax. It took me a long time to figure out that the youngest in a family of dragons is still a dragon from the point of view of those who find dragons alarming.
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Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?
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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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Things written down can cause a great deal of harm. All too often, people don't consider that.
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Roughing it builds a boy's character, but only certain kinds of roughing it.
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The darkness is really out there. It's not something that's in my head, just. It's in my work because it's in the world.
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The responsible treatment of this particular Ring of Power is not necessarily to toss it into the Cracks of Doom. But we have to come up with something rather quickly, or what we'll get is the Land of Mordor.
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Make the verses flow together. If a following verse has nothing to do with the previous, you may lose our listener/reader. You want a smooth flow to hear or read, and it's easier to memorize.
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You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.
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Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.
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I was unfair to him, of course, but where would I have been without unfairness? In thrall, in harness. Young women need unfairness, it's one of their few defenses. They need their callousness, they need their ignorance. They walk in the dark, along the edges of high cliffs, humming to themselves, thinking themselves invulnerable.
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Confronted by too much emptiness ... the brain invents. Loneliness creates company as thirst creates water. How many sailors have been wrecked in pursuit of islands that were merely a shimmering?
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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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I felt white, drained of blood, cared for, purified. Peaceful.
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It's in Macbeth: The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon. I seldom have occasion to pull it out, but it's ready and waiting!
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