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Some cleric putting a match to her. /Neither of them looks happy about it. /Once lit, she'll burn like a book, /like a book that was ever finished, /like a locked-up library.
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
Match
Ever
Book
Locked
Looks
Burn
Like
Library
Putting
Finished
Cleric
Neither
Lit
Happy
More quotes by Margaret Atwood
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.
Margaret Atwood
I enjoyed teaching. I liked the students. Having to formulate my ideas about literature made them clearer. I did not particularly enjoy the more bureaucratic aspects of the job. However, if you are teaching fervently, your energy and time are used up at a great rate.
Margaret Atwood
There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt.
Margaret Atwood
Is anything wrong, dear? the old joke went. No, why? You moved. Just don't move.
Margaret Atwood
Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.
Margaret Atwood
How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.
Margaret Atwood
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.
Margaret Atwood
Screw poetry, it’s you I want, your taste, rain on you, mouth on your skin.
Margaret Atwood
There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive.
Margaret Atwood
I'm not an activist by nature. I am suspicious of Utopian thinking and equally suspicious of its alternate. I would prefer to stay in the Writing Burrow and play with my imaginary friends and enemies. I get sucked into these things.
Margaret Atwood
Confronted by too much emptiness ... the brain invents. Loneliness creates company as thirst creates water. How many sailors have been wrecked in pursuit of islands that were merely a shimmering?
Margaret Atwood
The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wrong.
Margaret Atwood
All observations of life are harsh, because life is. I lament that fact, but I cannot change it.
Margaret Atwood
For the children with their greedy little mouths represent the future, which like time itself will devour all now alive.
Margaret Atwood
... all this talking, this rather liquid confessing, was something I didn't think I could ever bring myself to do. It seemed foolhardy to me, like an uncooked egg deciding to to come out of its shell: there would be a risk of spreading out too far, turning into a formless puddle.
Margaret Atwood
Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win.
Margaret Atwood
He has to find more and better ways of occupying his time. His time, what a bankrupt idea, as if he's been given a box of time belonging to him alone, stuffed to the brim with hours and minutes that he can spend like money. Trouble is, the box has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what he does with it.
Margaret Atwood
Optimism means better than reality pessimism means worse than reality. I'm a realist.
Margaret Atwood
Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don't fit in?
Margaret Atwood
How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it.
Margaret Atwood
