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Where do the words go when we have said them?

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
Words

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

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A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.
Margaret Atwood
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The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil
Margaret Atwood
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That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.
Margaret Atwood
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What a moron I was to think you were sweet and innocent, when it turns out you were actually college-educated the whole time!
Margaret Atwood
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Maybe the life I think I'm living is a paranoid delusion...Sanity is a valuable possession I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.
Margaret Atwood
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I was kidnapped by literature at a young age and never wanted to be ransomed.
Margaret Atwood
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You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.
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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As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist.
Margaret Atwood
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I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.
Margaret Atwood
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Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.
Margaret Atwood
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A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. Think of it as the altar of the Muse Oblivion, to whom you sacrifice your botched first drafts, the tokens of your human imperfection.
Margaret Atwood
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In high school, in 1956, at the age of sixteen, we were not taught creative writing. We were taught literature and grammar. So no one ever told me I couldn't write both prose and poetry, and I started out writing all the things I still write: poetry, prose fiction - which took me longer to get published - and non-fiction prose.
Margaret Atwood
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Hunger is a powerful reorganizer of the conscience.
Margaret Atwood
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Even an obvious fabrication is some comfort when you have few others.
Margaret Atwood
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Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy?
Margaret Atwood
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Faith is only a word, embroidered.
Margaret Atwood
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Writing is alone, but I don't think it's lonely. Ask any writer if they feel lonely when they're writing their book, and I think they'll say no.
Margaret Atwood
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Science never makes things that do not have to do with what we feel, by which I mean what we want and what we fear.
Margaret Atwood
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You might 'write from the heart,' but you'd better polish with your brain.
Margaret Atwood