Quote

So this was the rest of his life. It felt like a party to which he'd been invited, but at an address he couldn't actually locate. Someone must be having fun at it, this life of his only, right at the moment, it wasn't him.

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
Right
Fun
Must
Wasn
Life
Party
Locate
Like
Actually
Invited
Moment
Address
Felt
Addresses
Moments
Couldn
Someone
Rest

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The fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly.
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We shouldn't be saying 'Save the planet' we should be saying: 'Save viable conditions in which people can live.' That's what we're dealing with here.
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Lose your temper and you lose the fight.
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For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.
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­Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.
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I'm not an activist by nature. I am suspicious of Utopian thinking and equally suspicious of its alternate. I would prefer to stay in the Writing Burrow and play with my imaginary friends and enemies. I get sucked into these things.
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Canada is a balloon-puncturing country. You are not really allowed to be an icon unless you also make an idiot of yourself.
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Don't let the bastards grind you down.
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When any civilization is dust and ashes, he said, art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.
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We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups.
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About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives.
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For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it.
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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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A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.
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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.
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I am not your justification for existence.
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I enjoyed teaching. I liked the students. Having to formulate my ideas about literature made them clearer. I did not particularly enjoy the more bureaucratic aspects of the job. However, if you are teaching fervently, your energy and time are used up at a great rate.
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Extreme good, extreme evil: the abilities required are similar.
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Make the verses flow together. If a following verse has nothing to do with the previous, you may lose our listener/reader. You want a smooth flow to hear or read, and it's easier to memorize.
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oil paints...the look of licked lips.
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