Quote

This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year's threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future the place of caught breath.

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
Years
Becomes
Unlocking
Year
Threshold
Point
Lets
Future
Midnight
Place
Breath
Past
Breaths
Stills
Caught
Solstice
Still
Sun
Cusp

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It's clear, it's fresh, like a mint candy.
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If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?
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The reader cannot see into your heart. He will know only what you tell him. Make the blind see your words. Make the hard-hearted feel. Make the deaf hear.
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It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography — but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off.
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The short answer to 'Why do you write' is - I suppose I write for some of the same reasons I read: to live a double life to go places I haven't been to examine life on earth to come to know people in ways, and at depths, that are otherwise impossible to be surprised.
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Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful the secret depths of human nature, the sordid physicalities, might overwhelm or damage them. For instance, men often faint at the sight of their own blood, to which they are not accustomed. For this reason you should never stand behind one in the line at the Red Cross donor clinic.
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Life's not fair why should I be?
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Her glass wings are gone.
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Things might have been different if she hadn't been able to drift if she'd had to concentrate on her next meal, instead of dwelling on all the injuries she felt we'd done her. An unearned income encourages self-pity in those already prone to it.
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It's evening, one of those gray water-color washes, like liquid dust.
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I’m not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don’t know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder.
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Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.
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Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave - The water below is as dark as the grave, And maybe you'll sink in your little blue boat - It's hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat
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Maybe the life I think I'm living is a paranoid delusion...Sanity is a valuable possession I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.
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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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friendship was always contingent.
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I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
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When I finally went to school I had to adjust to other girls and learn their fiendish ways. Having learnt them, I turned them on all and sundry.
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Toast is me. I am toast.
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A truth should exist, it should not be used like this. If I love you is that a fact or a weapon?
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