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You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.

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
Amount
Nerve
Walks
Nerves
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River
Certain
Rivers
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There is so much going on all over the world that it's impossible for one person to keep up. And I can't.
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If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.
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and each of his voices left his body in a different colored soul and floated up towards the sun still singing.
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­Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.
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Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.
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Extreme good, extreme evil: the abilities required are similar.
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Thy only authentic ending is the one provided here: John and Mary die, John and Mary die, John and Mary die.
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Love is giving, marriage is buying and selling. You can't put love into a contract.
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Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.
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Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly. Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God.
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We've learned to see the world in gasps.
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This afternoon held that special quality of mournful emptiness I've connected with late Sunday afternoons ever since childhood: the feeling of having nothing to do.
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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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I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.
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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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Although from you I far must roam, do not be broken hearted. We two, who in the souls are one, are never truly parted.
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The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don't think I solve problems in my poetry I think I uncover the problems.
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I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.
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He's lost something, some illusion I used to think was necessary to him. He's come to realize he too is human. Or is this a performance, for my benefit, to show me he's up-to-date? Maybe men shouldn't have been told about their own humanity. It's only made them uncomfortable. It's only made them trickier, slier, more evasive, harder to read.
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Ah men, why do you want all this attention? I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutely necessary. What do you have to offer me I can't find otherwise except humiliation? Which I no longer need.
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