Quote

He has to find more and better ways of occupying his time. His time, what a bankrupt idea, as if he's been given a box of time belonging to him alone, stuffed to the brim with hours and minutes that he can spend like money. Trouble is, the box has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what he does with it.

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
Way
Running
Boxes
Time
Given
Spend
Like
Money
Minutes
Brim
Doe
Trouble
Occupying
Ideas
Ways
Stuffed
Better
Alone
Bankrupt
Find
Hours
Belonging
Matter
Idea
Holes

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If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?
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The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds.
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We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat.
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Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out.
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The fact is that blank pages inspire me with terror. What will I put on them? Will it be good enough? Will I have to throw it out?
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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.
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Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.
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The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.
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A truth should exist, it should not be used like this. If I love you is that a fact or a weapon?
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I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over.
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If you're a woman writer, sometime, somewhere, you will be asked: Do you think of yourself as a writer first, or as a woman first? Look out. Whoever asks this hates and fears both writing and women.
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But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.
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She had no images of this love. She could offer no anecdotes. It was a belief rather than a memory.
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Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.
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Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.
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All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.
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Some cleric putting a match to her. /Neither of them looks happy about it. /Once lit, she'll burn like a book, /like a book that was ever finished, /like a locked-up library.
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Short forms are returning online. Interactivity is coming back it was always there in oral storytelling.
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