Quote

Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings...but there’s something dead about it, something deserted.

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
Arms
Listen
Dead
Around
Disembodied
Body
Blamed
Without
Deserted
Real
Heartbeat
Something
Wanting

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When women let their hair down, it means either sexiness or craziness or death, the three by Victorian times having become virtually synonymous.
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A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. Think of it as the altar of the Muse Oblivion, to whom you sacrifice your botched first drafts, the tokens of your human imperfection.
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But the adjectives change,” said Jimmy. “Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives.
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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.
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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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In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
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The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil
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The responsible treatment of this particular Ring of Power is not necessarily to toss it into the Cracks of Doom. But we have to come up with something rather quickly, or what we'll get is the Land of Mordor.
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I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I want to steal something.
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I got into trouble a while ago for saying that I thought the internet led to increased literacy - people scolded me about the shocking grammar to be found online - but I was talking about fundamentals: quite simply, you can't use the net unless you can read.
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I'm a Red Tory. To get a fix on this category, you have to go back to the 19th century. The Tories were the ones who believed that those in power had a responsibility to the community, that money should not be the measure of all things.
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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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Toast is me. I am toast.
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We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
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My own view of myself was that I was small and innocuous, a marshmallow compared to the others. I was a poor shot with a 22, for instance, and not very good with an ax. It took me a long time to figure out that the youngest in a family of dragons is still a dragon from the point of view of those who find dragons alarming.
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I didn't much like it, this grudge-holding against the past.
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As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist.
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Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress.
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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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If you disagree with your government, that's political. If you disagree with your government that is approaching theocracy, then you're evil.
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