Quote

These things you did were like prayers you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.

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
Part
Prayers
Still
Save
Something
Prayer
Things
Alive
Would
Fact
Like
Facts
Tell
Stills
Hoped

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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.
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In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys.
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Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee... I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.
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Those walls and bars are there for a reason,” said Crake. “Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases.” “Them?” “Nature and God.” “I thought you didn’t believe in God,” said Jimmy. “I don’t believe in Nature either,” said Crake. “Or not with a capital N.
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There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits.
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So much better to travel than to arrive.
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It's evening, one of those gray water-color washes, like liquid dust.
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I began to forget myself in the middle of sentences.
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To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self. She is living selflessly, she finds a hole in the stone wall and on the other side of the wall, a voice. The voice comes through darkness and has no face. This voice becomes her mirror.
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If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?
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It's rather useless to write a gripping narrative with nothing in it but climate change because novels are always about people even if they purport to be about rabbits or robots.
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We are a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.
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Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I've found but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them.
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I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.
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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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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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Thy only authentic ending is the one provided here: John and Mary die, John and Mary die, John and Mary die.
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I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
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If he wants to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before him have made the same life choice.
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Some days I do appreciate things more, eggs, flowers, but then I decide I'm only having an attack of sentimentality, my brain going pastel Technicolor, like a beautiful-sunset greeting cards they used to make so many of in California. High-gloss hearts. The danger is grayout.
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