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I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again.

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
Everyone
Good
Things
Never
Eager
Spoken
Remembered
Forgotten

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

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Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn't happen, but other planets.
Margaret Atwood
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Fiction is not necessarily about what you know, it's about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel.
Margaret Atwood
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I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.
Margaret Atwood
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This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.
Margaret Atwood
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You fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye
Margaret Atwood
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As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter.
Margaret Atwood
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You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.
Margaret Atwood
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You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.
Margaret Atwood
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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.
Margaret Atwood
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We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.
Margaret Atwood
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If it's all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it's all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that's it. You're not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You're not going to read that book again.
Margaret Atwood
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While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my skin - not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.
Margaret Atwood
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In my dreams of this city I am always lost.
Margaret Atwood
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In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys.
Margaret Atwood
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You're never going to kill storytelling, because it's built into the human plan. We come with it.
Margaret Atwood
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Modesty is invisibility... Never forget it. To be seen - to be seen - is to be... penetrated. What you must be girls, is impenetrable.
Margaret Atwood
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Most mothers worry when their daughters reach adolescence but I was the opposite. I relaxed, I sighed with relief. Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.
Margaret Atwood
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Science never makes things that do not have to do with what we feel, by which I mean what we want and what we fear.
Margaret Atwood
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Stick a shovel into the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light. Good for trade, we thrive on bones without them there'd be no stories.
Margaret Atwood
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All it takes,” said Crake, “is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.
Margaret Atwood