Quote

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.

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
Would
Course
Unfair
Thrall
Thinking
High
Edges
Invulnerable
Dark
Defense
Callousness
Young
Ignorance
Defenses
Women
Along
Unfairness
Without
Walk
Humming
Need
Walks
Harness
Needs
Courses
Cliffs

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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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Gravity works in your life, the notion of free will works in your life, however problematic it may at times be.
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That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.
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Modesty is invisibility... Never forget it. To be seen - to be seen - is to be... penetrated. What you must be girls, is impenetrable.
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I didn't much like it, this grudge-holding against the past.
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I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more.
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There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.
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Even an obvious fabrication is some comfort when you have few others.
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While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my skin - not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.
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You might 'write from the heart,' but you'd better polish with your brain.
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It's evening, one of those gray water-color washes, like liquid dust.
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I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it.
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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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