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We shouldn't have been so scornful we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.

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
Work
Scornful
Shouldn
Compassion
Takes
Young

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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.
Margaret Atwood
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Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the United States, can you avoid such a thing. In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal. Outside the empire or on the fringes of the empire, you cannot.
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How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.
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I'm not an activist by nature. I am suspicious of Utopian thinking and equally suspicious of its alternate.
Margaret Atwood
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EXTINCTATHON, Monitored by MaddAddam. Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Do you want to play?
Margaret Atwood
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The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish drying on sand.
Margaret Atwood
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There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.
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So much better to travel than to arrive.
Margaret Atwood
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I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.
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.
Margaret Atwood
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Like the trains, she's never on time and always departing.
Margaret Atwood
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All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.
Margaret Atwood
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There is no fool like an educated fool.
Margaret Atwood
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To take that risk, to offer life and remain alive, open yourself like this and become whole.
Margaret Atwood
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It's his word against the Commander's, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.
Margaret Atwood
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and each of his voices left his body in a different colored soul and floated up towards the sun still singing.
Margaret Atwood
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Instead I will say, Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers take me to your deaths. These are worth it. These are what I have come for.
Margaret Atwood
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I never say I'm an ist of any kind unless I know how the other person is defining it.
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There is so much going on all over the world that it's impossible for one person to keep up. And I can't.
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The proper study of Mankind is Everything.
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