Quote

Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.

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
Absence
Wait
Along
Goes
Waiting
Actually
Better
Make
Invent

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

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Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.
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The reader cannot see into your heart. He will know only what you tell him. Make the blind see your words. Make the hard-hearted feel. Make the deaf hear.
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Everybody acts as if they have free will. They act as if they can make these decisions do they know they don't? I think there's been some back-down on the idea that everything is determined.
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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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If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive.
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Like the trains, she's never on time and always departing.
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In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys.
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You fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye
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If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.
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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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The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.
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Richard liked to say he picked things up for a song, which was odd, because he never sang. He never even whistled. He was not a musical person.
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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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Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.
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While in a vintage restaurant...the past isn't quaint while you're in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you see it as decor, not as the shape your life's been squeezed into.
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Love's never a fair trade.
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As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter.
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Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn't happen, but other planets.
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A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.
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I walk away from him. It's enormously pleasing to me, this walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will.
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