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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.

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
Many
Latter
Elements
System
Study
Upon
History
Incorporating
Found
Impose
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More quotes by Margaret Atwood

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Even in the tragedies, [William] Shakespeare always put in parts for the comic actors because his audience was mixed. He puts in people who talk like aristocrats. He puts in idiots and fools.
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All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.
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And consider: it is loss to which everything flows, absence in which everything flowers
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His father was self-made, but his mother was constructed by others, and such edifices are notoriously fragile.
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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.
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The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner.
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But the adjectives change,” said Jimmy. “Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives.
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There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits.
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Optimism means better than reality pessimism means worse than reality. I'm a realist.
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I'm a novelist, and idle speculation is what novelists do. How odd to spend one's life trying to pretend that non-existent people are real: though no odder, I suppose, than what government bureaucrats do, which is trying to pretend that real people are non-existent.
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There's nothing like a shovel full of dirt to encourage literacy.
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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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It's very hard for students not to be in debt unless they've got big scholarships or rich parents. And it's called investing in your future, but like any investment it's risky because your future is an unknown quantity. However, if you don't invest in your future, you may be flipping hamburgers for the rest of your life. So it's a real dilemma.
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Show me a character totally without anxieties and I will show you a boring book.
Margaret Atwood
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Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.
Margaret Atwood
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The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand you must see your left hand erasing it.
Margaret Atwood
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What you get is no longer what you see.
Margaret Atwood
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All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.
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You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.
Margaret Atwood
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Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.
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