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I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.

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
Ballerina
Flawless
Clown
Dancing
Dance
Though
Rather
Would

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

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You might 'write from the heart,' but you'd better polish with your brain.
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Choice of evils debates always produce extremism - people choose what they hope is the lesser evil, then call it good and demonize the other choice. It will be a challenge for your generation to synthesize - to move beyond Us versus Them, to We.
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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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I have long since decided if you wait for the perfect time to write, you'll never write. There is no time that isn't flawed somehow.
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You can think clearly only with your clothes on.
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I was horrified in high school by the fate of the hanged maids at the end of the Odyssey it seemed unfair to me, even then.
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My parents were gardeners themselves, and perforce they used environmental techniques because it was during the war, and you didn't have the new sorts of chemicals.
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I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle for private expression, but that it also exists for social examination. I firmly believe this.
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I did not know how to paint or even what to paint, but I knew I had to begin.
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His mouth is on me, his hands, I can't wait and he's moving, already, love, it's been so long, I'm alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and water softly everywhere, never-ending.
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A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.
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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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I wish you good writing and good luck. Even if you've already done the good writing, you'll still need the good luck. It's a shark-filled lagoon out there. Cross your fingers and watch your back.
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Don't be married to a line or verse if it can't rhyme, fit the meter, or doesn't fit the outline.
Margaret Atwood
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No matter how much you've been warned, Death always comes without knocking. Why now? is the cry. Why so soon? It's the cry of a child being called home at dusk.
Margaret Atwood
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Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.
Margaret Atwood
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People cry at weddings for the same reason they cry at happy endings: because they so desperately want to believe in something they know is not credible.
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I am rather saddened at the end of a book. I think most writers find this. It's like a friend departing on a voyage.
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This has been her problem all her life: picturing other people's responses. She's too good at it. She can picture the response of anyone--other people's reactions, their emotions, their criticisms, their demands--but somehow they don't reciprocate. Maybe they can't. Maybe they lack the gift, if it is one.
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The internet is 95 percent porn and spam
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