Quote

Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence.

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
Return
Surely
Live
Cast
Never
Bright
Casts
Farewells
Absence
Shattering
Flesh
Farewell
Worse
Returns
Shadow
Solid

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History, as I recall, was never this winsome, and especially not this clean, but the real thing would never sell: most people prefer a past in which nothing smells.
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She knows the rituals, she knows how we're supposed to be behaving...But I think these things are impenetrable and fraudulent, and I can't do them without feeling I'm acting.
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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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Writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated deep down, by a fear or and fascination with mortality - by a desire to make the risky trip to the underworld and to bring something or someone back from the dead.
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You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter. I want to be with someone.
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Screw poetry, it’s you I want, your taste, rain on you, mouth on your skin.
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I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.
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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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EXTINCTATHON, Monitored by MaddAddam. Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Do you want to play?
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Moira was like an elevator with open sides. She made us dizzy.
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I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.
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He needed to exist only in the present, without guilt, without expectation.
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I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it.
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In the animal world individuals cheat, as do we.
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They will not let you have peace, they don't want you to have anything they don't have themselves.
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There's nothing like drawing a thing to make you really see it.
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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.
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But nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency.
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Everybody acts as if they have free will. They act as if they can make these decisions do they know they don't? I think there's been some back-down on the idea that everything is determined.
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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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