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Optimism means better than reality pessimism means worse than reality. I'm a realist.

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
Mean
Realist
Pessimism
Optimistic
Optimism
Worse
Means
Reality
Better

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

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I was kidnapped by literature at a young age and never wanted to be ransomed.
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All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.
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When women let their hair down, it means either sexiness or craziness or death, the three by Victorian times having become virtually synonymous.
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I didn't want him to become gray and multi-dimensional and complicated like everyone else. Was every Heathcliff a Linton in disguise?
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My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way.
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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.
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Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering Mine!Mine!
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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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A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.
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I always thought eating was a ridiculous activity anyway. I'd get out of it myself if I could, though you've got to do it to stay alive, they tell me.
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You might 'write from the heart,' but you'd better polish with your brain.
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Our problem right now is that we're so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there's a little utopia.
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I'm a novelist, and idle speculation is what novelists do. How odd to spend one's life trying to pretend that non-existent people are real: though no odder, I suppose, than what government bureaucrats do, which is trying to pretend that real people are non-existent.
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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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It's his word against the Commander's, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.
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If you want what's in the package you should at least know how to get the string off, is what I say.
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When I was 16 I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines. My main feedback came from my English teacher, Miss Bessie B. Billings, who said, 'I can't understand this at all, dear, so it must be good.
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Roughing it builds a boy's character, but only certain kinds of roughing it.
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All it takes,” said Crake, “is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.
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The cat jumps up on the bed and tries to get onto my head. It's his way of telling whether or not i'm dead. If i'm not, he wants to be scratched if i am - he'll think of something
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