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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.

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
Suffering
Relieve
Certain
Lunatic
Human
Machine
Humans
Possibly
Much
Machines
Good
Hundred
Would
Deal
Sewing
Deals
Asylums

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I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it.
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You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.
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­Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.
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expectation isn't the same as desire
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Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.
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The darkness is really out there. It's not something that's in my head, just. It's in my work because it's in the world.
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Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.
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Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.
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There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits.
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Fear has a smell, as love does.
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The goals of the feminist movement have not been achieved, and those who claim we're living in a post-feminist era are either sadly mistaken or tired of thinking about the whole subject.
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I didn't want him to become gray and multi-dimensional and complicated like everyone else. Was every Heathcliff a Linton in disguise?
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You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.
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Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it's noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear.
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The characters [of The Tempest] have always been favorites of mine. It is one of his meditations on art - what it does.
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Come away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.
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But the adjectives change,” said Jimmy. “Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives.
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He's lost something, some illusion I used to think was necessary to him. He's come to realize he too is human. Or is this a performance, for my benefit, to show me he's up-to-date? Maybe men shouldn't have been told about their own humanity. It's only made them uncomfortable. It's only made them trickier, slier, more evasive, harder to read.
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Oppression involves a failure of the imagination: the failure to imagine the full humanity of other human beings.
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There may not be one Truth - there may be several truths - but saying that is not to say that reality doesn't exist.
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