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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

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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
Equally
Writing
Prefer
Burrow
Things
Enemies
Alternate
Would
Stay
Sucked
Thinking
Utopian
Enemy
Suspicious
Friends
Activist
Nature
Imaginary
Play

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

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When we're young, we like happy endings. When we're a little older, we think happy endings are unrealistic and so we prefer bad but credible endings. When we're older still, we realize happy endings aren't so bad after all.
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For the children with their greedy little mouths represent the future, which like time itself will devour all now alive.
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You can't keep a cool head when you're drowning in love. You just trash around a lot and scream, and wear yourself out.
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We shouldn't have been so scornful we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.
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I myself have 12 hats and each one represents a different personality. Why just be yourself.
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Don't misunderstand me. I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and far more complicated. But sometimes it's hard to put up with.
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While in a vintage restaurant...the past isn't quaint while you're in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you see it as decor, not as the shape your life's been squeezed into.
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I tried to visualize my jealousy as a yellowy-brown cloud boiling around inside me, then going out through my nose like smoke and turning into a stone and falling down into the ground. That did work a little. But in my visualization a plant covered with poison berries would grow out of the stone, whether I wanted it to or not.
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The act of making a photograph is less a question of what is being looked at than how.
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The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.
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Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy?
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I knew what love was supposed to be: obsession with undertones of nausea.
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The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.
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Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering unlike love.
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His mouth is on me, his hands, I can't wait and he's moving, already, love, it's been so long, I'm alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and water softly everywhere, never-ending.
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You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.
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The short answer to 'Why do you write' is - I suppose I write for some of the same reasons I read: to live a double life to go places I haven't been to examine life on earth to come to know people in ways, and at depths, that are otherwise impossible to be surprised.
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We've learned to see the world in gasps.
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Things written down can cause a great deal of harm. All too often, people don't consider that.
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There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits.
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