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In high school, in 1956, at the age of sixteen, we were not taught creative writing. We were taught literature and grammar. So no one ever told me I couldn't write both prose and poetry, and I started out writing all the things I still write: poetry, prose fiction - which took me longer to get published - and non-fiction prose.

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
Write
Longer
Sixteen
Stills
Told
Grammar
School
Started
Published
Still
Taught
Prose
Ever
Creative
Couldn
Writing
High
Poetry
Things
Literature
Took
Age
Fiction

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I never say I'm an ist of any kind unless I know how the other person is defining it.
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Each form has its pluses and its minuses.
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I'm the only person you've ever met who has read Longfellow.
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You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.
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If he wants to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before him have made the same life choice.
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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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...how much needless despair has been caused by a series of biological mismatches, a misalignment of the hormones and pheromones? Resulting in the fact that the one you love so passionately won't or can't love you. As a species we're pathetic that way: imperfectly monogamous.
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Canada is a balloon-puncturing country. You are not really allowed to be an icon unless you also make an idiot of yourself.
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Like the trains, she's never on time and always departing.
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Canadians are fond of a good disaster, especially if it has ice, water, or snow in it. You thought the national flag was about a leaf, didn't you? Look harder. It's where someone got axed in the snow.
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He doesn't know which is worse, a past he can't regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo.
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I think every age lives in a blend of technology so there's always older ones mixed in with newer ones, and when the new technology goes down, the immediate fallback position is either that technology just before that or one several technologies back.
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I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.
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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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In my dreams of this city I am always lost.
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It's evening, one of those gray water-color washes, like liquid dust.
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These things you did were like prayers you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.
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Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out.
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There's nothing like a shovel full of dirt to encourage literacy.
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The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand you must see your left hand erasing it.
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