After they had skated around the pond several times, my father asked my mother to marry him. I expect he did it awkwardly, but awkwardness in men was a sign of sincerity then.
Margaret Atwood
Related My father was very energetic; my mother was very energetic. He lived to a very old age, and so did m... DONALD TRUMP I was born at home in rural Kentucky, in 1942, in a house that my father Howard had built. He did mo... ROBERT H. GRUBBS While I have felt lonely many times in my life, the oddest feeling of all was after my mother, Lucil... BILL MURRAY Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt th... MOLLY IVINS My mother was madly adventurous. My father was an actor - he worked with Gielgud - and my mother cam... FRANCESCA ANNIS My grandfather killed my father in my mind. I know he died of cancer - but it was because of what my... HENRY FORD Most people marry their mother. I married my father. WAYNE GRETZKY When my father was arrested, we didn't know where they had him. My mother found him at the house... ORIANA FALLACI My mother's family is Christian: her father was a Baptist lay preacher, and her brother, in a le... SHEREEN EL FEKI My family never took me to church except a couple of times. But when I was 12, I hung out with this ... BRIAN WELCH My father was the role model I looked up to. My dad was an entertainer, too. I patterned my life aft... TRACY MORGAN After the awards, I didn't win, my father called me up and told me that the man from Johnstown had p... JAMES STEWART I would have been willing to do anything for my father. I would have moved in with my father to look... BRUCE PALTROW My mother and father had so many ups and downs and stayed with each other and helped each other. My ... PATTI SMITH One South Carolinian who grew up early in the twentieth century “did not learn that the South had ... PAUL D. ESCOTT I opened myself to your silences. MARGARET ATWOOD Did he show himself?” Nash asked, and I glanced to my right to see him staring at my father, as fa... RACHEL VINCENT Basically, my parents messed up because it was the Sixties, and they both had affairs, but they had ... SAFFRON ALDRIDGE Why did you marry Dad, Mom?" My mother sniffled through her nose, looked at me, then smiled. <... MARGARET MCMULLAN No, Margaret Atwood writes literature, whereas I write fiction. I'm from the American Midwest, so li... STELLA ATRIUM When I was 5, my father was very much my hero. And he ran for political office in a very thankless c... HOWARD WARREN BUFFETT My first memory in the world is my gym teacher ripping my mother's necklace off her neck and thr... MIKE NICHOLS When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1991, I asked him if he had any regrets, and he... MICHELLE PAVER I visited my father for the full ten years that he was in prison, so we already had a deep and lovin... SAM SHEPPARD There were nine children in my father's family and eight in my mother's. My grandparents did... CHERYL LADD My mother was a piano teacher, my father an inventor. He invented the reflective paint they still us... CHUCK CLOSE After the fire, when I'd tried to express my gratitude for their kindness to our customers, they'd b... CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI So my father grew up in an orphanage in Boston. He was then adopted by an elderly childless couple f... GEORGE J. MITCHELL I come from a blue-collar family. My father worked at the American Can Company as a mechanic. He bro... JOSEPH ABBOUD My father is openly gay. He really loved my mother, but their marriage fell apart. When they separat... BEN CURTIS And he left the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said, Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mot... BIBLE Both my parents had strokes. My father had several, but the last one was fatal. It's a horribly ... RUTH RENDELL Then my mother had several strokes and my father, who was 85, couldn't handle it, so Donna came ... SALLY QUINN My father was never around, and my mother used to worry that the kids won't grow up to be connec... RAM KAPOOR I sang for him several times. He always asked me to play this one ... MARCELINO MARTINEZ GARCIA My mother she was heaven bound, I did not see it then but i see it now, being a child wasn't an easy... STUART STOKES My mother, Evelyn, was an actress and singer, and my father, Jack, was an actor. My earliest recolle... DAVID CASSIDY My mother Molly had a nervous breakdown after my father Chic died, aged 50. He was a very generous m... BRIAN COX Women are smarter by basic instinct and by what we have to do to multitask at home and at work. My m... MIREILLE GUILIANO My mother died young. A lot of people wanted us to be adopted out, but before she died, my mother as... EMMA BIEL I had a lot of chaos in my very early years before I was old enough to know what was going on, and t... JEREMY SISTO I don't talk about it. But when I was a little girl, my father was abusive when he drank and seemed ... ELIZABETH TAYLOR I told director of my camp what he said, so he called him and gave him a couple of words. I asked my... ALEXANDER BUNEGIN I couldn't find anyone and he was visiting on set so I asked him to go change. He was okay with it b... PETER CHAN My father was slower, but he was severer than my mother, who was quick but light and irregular in di... LINCOLN STEFFENS I grew up in a household where reading was encouraged. My mother believed in the power of words, and... CAROLINE KENNEDY My mother and stepfather were in Vaudeville. And my stepfather was an alcoholic. It was a lot of rol... JULIE ANDREWS He was simply a man ahead of his time. He was the second of two men I knew who never had any prejudi... BUCK O'NEIL He gave my wife rides home from work numerous times. We never felt uncomfortable. I talked to my gir... BILL BERDAN He gave my wife rides home from work numerous times. We never felt uncomfortable. I talked to my gir... BILL VERDAN It was difficult for my mother to travel with my father. He was 92 and he'd been sick. He couldn't d... JAMES MAXEY I had a mixture, my father was a career army man and my mother was a writer. BILL GRIFFITH Unlike my mother, who was unashamedly delighted when I decided to become an actor, I always feel tha... MARTIN CLUNES My grandfather had been on the New York City force with his 11 brothers around the turn of the centu... BONNIE BEDELIA My Mother is Swedish and my Father is Scottish, he played for Charlton in the 1960's and was in ... RICHARD GOUGH Although both of us were raised on Oahu, in Honolulu, my mother has always had fond memories of Maui... HANYA YANAGIHARA My parents had a wonderful marriage, but it was a very dependent relationship. My mother was entirel... ERIKA SLEZAK My father never did any of the things that my friends’ fathers did with them. We never tossed a fo... SUSAN FORWARD I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store a... SHIRLEY TEMPLE BLACK I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store a... SHIRLEY TEMPLE My parents had an arranged marriage, as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father ca... JHUMPA LAHIRI My father was a tailor. He worked from seven o'clock in the morning until seven at night. At lea... HAROLD PINTER Like most guys, I had bought into the stereotype that all feminists were white, lesbian, unattractiv... BYRON HURT I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he a... SHIRLEY TEMPLE He got out there and did what we asked him to do. We had a good plan going in. He had a great first ... COOPER FARRIS There were so many versions out there, and he (Roosevelt) was bothered by it. He asked my father to ... FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT Whatever it was her father wanted, Emma did not know how to provide it. She felt confused by what he... CAROL LEE My uncle was a hero, Lewis Roundtree. He was not even related to me really, but he was always called... ED BRADLEY When I was a little girl, my mother tried to make me dance, but I did not like it then. CARINE ROITFELD My favourite English player of my time was Paul Gascoigne. I interviewed him several times, always e... JOHN MOTSON My father, born in Colorado, met my mother, born in Switzerland, when he went into the finance compa... SUSAN STRAIGHT My father was a construction worker most of his life. My mother, when she came from Guadalajara, Jal... XAVIER BECERRA Three days after my brother died, my father was in the hospital. He just did not want to live anymor... MARC FORSTER My father died when I was 7. I was his favorite child, and he was my beloved father. I brought him a... P. L. TRAVERS My father was an insurance man and a small-time gambler. He was a good man, but he had an eye for th... DON RICKLES I had a nightmare. So my friend asked me what it was. I told him it was him sleeping with my mom. He... MUNTAZIR M. I felt it was my job as his mother, ... I brought him into the world with this set of circumstances ... WENDY KRAMER The first thing I did when I sold my book was buy a new wedding ring for my wife and asked her to ma... NICHOLAS SPARKS It may be in the interest of others to be your masters, but why should it be in your interest to be ... DAMODAR JADHAV When he asked permission to stay, we were just shocked. He spent the summer and then he just stayed.... SALU POLAMALU My freshman year of high school was just awkwardness all around. MOLLY TARLOV My father's from Australia and my mother was born in India, but she's actually Tibetan. I wa... DICHEN LACHMAN If you asked anybody in my family, they would have very stridently proclaimed themselves middle clas... DAVE VAN RONK My parents came from different backgrounds. My father's was grander than my mother's, so my ... JULIAN FELLOWES What I saw when I was a child was my father who was a pilot, and because of circumstances was thrown... RAHUL GANDHI During the minister's prayer one Sunday, there was a loud whistle from one of the back pews. Gary's ... UNKNOWN I had been asked several times before but just never really gave it serious thought. JACKIE WILLIAMS When I was a kid, my dream was to be a farmer and marry Charlie Brown. I wanted to rescue him and ma... ALICIA WITT 'Scarface,' I remember going to see that with my father. We didn't know what to expect; ... LARENZ TATE I was shaking in my boots. I told him, 'Michael. I'm 71 years old. I've had this house for 39 years.... CAROL REBELLO I was shaking in my boots. I told him, 'Michael. I'm 71 years old. I've had this house for 39 years.... CAROL S. REBELLO Chris was a friend of mine, I loved him. I didn't see him for 18 months before he died, but I... MARGOT KIDDER You think about child abuse and you think of a father viciously attacking a daughter or a son, but i... LYNN JOHNSTON My father, Oliver Hynes, was an educator. He was originally just a teacher, a very good one, but the... GARRY HYNES In terms of fashion, I think the biggest influence that I had was my father. My pops, he was really ... DANNY BROWN At the Apollo, he asked me to come and stand in for him. He's like my father. AL SHARPTON My parents were no ordinary people. My mother turned Gandhian, and my father was a staunch communist... KABIR BEDI And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother... BIBLE When my mother died, my father was in a crisis, my sister was in a crisis, everyone was in a crisis.... STUART ROSE My father was a world-class scientist and my mother was a prolific painter. I could see that my pare... JON KABAT-ZINN
More Margaret Atwood
Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome. MARGARET ATWOOD Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I'm a realist. MARGARET ATWOOD Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they ... MARGARET ATWOOD A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you. MARGARET ATWOOD If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schiz... MARGARET ATWOOD The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many... MARGARET ATWOOD An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness. MARGARET ATWOOD If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word. MARGARET ATWOOD Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space be... MARGARET ATWOOD I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did,... MARGARET ATWOOD When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely. MARGARET ATWOOD You're never going to kill storytelling, because it's built into the human plan. We come wit... MARGARET ATWOOD Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no yo... MARGARET ATWOOD Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do ... MARGARET ATWOOD Don't let the bastards grind you down. MARGARET ATWOOD When you can't tell the difference between your own pleasure and your pain then you're an addict. MARGARET ATWOOD The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but ... MARGARET ATWOOD Once upon a time you could wander around one country, then the next and then maybe you'd go to Engla... MARGARET ATWOOD They've removed anything you can tie a rope to. MARGARET ATWOOD Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all... MARGARET ATWOOD No one knows what cuases an outer landscape to become an inner one. MARGARET ATWOOD The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for ... MARGARET ATWOOD Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you c... MARGARET ATWOOD Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories,... MARGARET ATWOOD Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells ... MARGARET ATWOOD Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results. MARGARET ATWOOD Longed for him. Got him. Shit. MARGARET ATWOOD If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you ... MARGARET ATWOOD But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind eve... MARGARET ATWOOD I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed an... MARGARET ATWOOD I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until yo... MARGARET ATWOOD If i thought this would never happen again I would die. But this is wrong, nobody dies from lac... MARGARET ATWOOD Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic... MARGARET ATWOOD That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even an... MARGARET ATWOOD There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet a... MARGARET ATWOOD We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of pr... MARGARET ATWOOD But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it... MARGARET ATWOOD Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Wat... MARGARET ATWOOD Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself. MARGARET ATWOOD The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for lo... MARGARET ATWOOD A word after a word after a word is power. MARGARET ATWOOD I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because the... MARGARET ATWOOD She even had a kind of special position among men: she was an exception, she fitted none of the cate... MARGARET ATWOOD Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful; the secret depths of human nature, the ... MARGARET ATWOOD The basic Female body comes with the following accessories: garter belt, panty-girdle, crinoline, ca... MARGARET ATWOOD Never pray for justice, because you might get some. MARGARET ATWOOD If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least h... MARGARET ATWOOD I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and... MARGARET ATWOOD A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you MARGARET ATWOOD Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD War is what happens when language fails. MARGARET ATWOOD Miranda nods, because she knows that to be true: noble people don't do things for the money, they si... MARGARET ATWOOD Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. MARGARET ATWOOD This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love. MARGARET ATWOOD I'm a strict, strict agnostic. It's very different from a casual, 'I don't know.'... MARGARET ATWOOD Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-size... MARGARET ATWOOD Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. P... MARGARET ATWOOD I hate to tell you this, but you will never actually go to a galaxy far, far away and encounter Dart... MARGARET ATWOOD Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are describe... MARGARET ATWOOD The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose. MARGARET ATWOOD In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. MARGARET ATWOOD I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think. MARGARET ATWOOD Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada,... MARGARET ATWOOD Sometimes there would be couples, arm in arm—laughing, happy, amorous. Victims of an enormous frau... MARGARET ATWOOD I've never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are... MARGARET ATWOOD Was this a betrayal, or was it an act of courage? Perhaps both. Neither one involves forethought: su... MARGARET ATWOOD The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is... MARGARET ATWOOD Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee... I hold inside it the clues and solutions and ... MARGARET ATWOOD They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it mark... MARGARET ATWOOD Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, ... MARGARET ATWOOD If you're put on a pedestal, you're supposed to behave yourself like a pedestal type of pers... MARGARET ATWOOD If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People... MARGARET ATWOOD I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually b... MARGARET ATWOOD Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the bow and arrow. MARGARET ATWOOD Vampires get the joy of flying around and living forever, werewolves get the joy of animal spirits. ... MARGARET ATWOOD Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays. MARGARET ATWOOD You will always have partial points of view, and you'll always have the story behind the story t... MARGARET ATWOOD Canada was built on dead beavers. MARGARET ATWOOD How shrunk, how dwindled, in our times Creation's mighty seed - For Man has broke the Fell... MARGARET ATWOOD She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation. In spirit she walks the city, traces its... MARGARET ATWOOD You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself. MARGARET ATWOOD Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I c... MARGARET ATWOOD Gardening is not a rational act. MARGARET ATWOOD Second-hand American was spreading over him in patches, like mange or lichen. He was infested, garbl... MARGARET ATWOOD وقتی دردپایان می یابد،دیگر در یاد چه کسی می ماند؟ تنها �... MARGARET ATWOOD We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. MARGARET ATWOOD If social stability goes pear-shaped, you have a choice between anarchy and dictatorship. Most peopl... MARGARET ATWOOD When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling ti... MARGARET ATWOOD We understand more than we know. MARGARET ATWOOD Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down. MARGARET ATWOOD You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their cred... MARGARET ATWOOD You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people's command of English - that'... MARGARET ATWOOD If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I wa... MARGARET ATWOOD Girl Without Hands Walking through the ruins on your way to work that do not lo... MARGARET ATWOOD '1984' is not a wonder tale. Not only could it happen, but it has happened, but under differ... MARGARET ATWOOD The thing about delirium is you think it's great, but it actually isn't. MARGARET ATWOOD We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we're so dependent on ... MARGARET ATWOOD I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka. MARGARET ATWOOD A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there's less of you. MARGARET ATWOOD The truly fearless think of themselves as normal. MARGARET ATWOOD Or perhaps she's just softening me up: she's a Baptist, she'd like me to find Jesus, or vice versa, ... MARGARET ATWOOD Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing ove... MARGARET ATWOOD When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like ... MARGARET ATWOOD My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one ... MARGARET ATWOOD The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth. MARGARET ATWOOD I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months... MARGARET ATWOOD If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never a... MARGARET ATWOOD Debt is part of the human condition. Civilization is based on exchanges - on gifts, trades, loans - ... MARGARET ATWOOD I particularly like Twitter, because it's short and can be very funny and informative. It's ... MARGARET ATWOOD I do have a life,' says Charis, blinking wet eyes. 'You have a rich inner life,' says Ton... MARGARET ATWOOD Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? MARGARET ATWOOD No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the... MARGARET ATWOOD We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of pr... MARGARET ATWOOD But despite everything, we didn't do badly by one another, we did as well as most. I wish she were h... MARGARET ATWOOD But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No ... MARGARET ATWOOD Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some. MARGARET ATWOOD Our problem right now is that we're so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge n... MARGARET ATWOOD There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind. MARGARET ATWOOD Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tootin... MARGARET ATWOOD Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide... MARGARET ATWOOD Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window cloud... MARGARET ATWOOD Modesty is invisibility...Never forget it. To be seen—to be seen —is to be...penetrated. W... MARGARET ATWOOD In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as po... MARGARET ATWOOD Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on you... MARGARET ATWOOD Sauve qui peut. To survive we’d all turn thief and rascal, or so says the fox, MARGARET ATWOOD Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that. MARGARET ATWOOD But how can you have a sense of wonder if you’re prepared for everything? MARGARET ATWOOD Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, scho... MARGARET ATWOOD A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness. MARGARET ATWOOD The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wron... MARGARET ATWOOD She finds this objectivity of hers, this clarity, almost more depressing than she can bear, not beca... MARGARET ATWOOD Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a ... MARGARET ATWOOD Many believed what they were told: that the welfare of the entire kingdom depended on their selfless... MARGARET ATWOOD She did understand, or at least she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, ... MARGARET ATWOOD When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be whe... MARGARET ATWOOD We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something harmful, t... MARGARET ATWOOD Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide... MARGARET ATWOOD I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing... MARGARET ATWOOD Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you... MARGARET ATWOOD What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams... MARGARET ATWOOD There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's somethin... MARGARET ATWOOD I believe that everyone else my age is an adult whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness... MARGARET ATWOOD The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied... MARGARET ATWOOD You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly f... MARGARET ATWOOD Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you sa... MARGARET ATWOOD You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t ne... MARGARET ATWOOD But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion.... MARGARET ATWOOD When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things ... MARGARET ATWOOD Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert... MARGARET ATWOOD It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and set... MARGARET ATWOOD The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds. MARGARET ATWOOD I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose. MARGARET ATWOOD She knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy. MARGARET ATWOOD Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, t... MARGARET ATWOOD Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert... MARGARET ATWOOD Home is where the heart is, I thought now, gathering myself together in Betty's Luncheonette. I had ... MARGARET ATWOOD Should is a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It... MARGARET ATWOOD What is it the I'll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which i... MARGARET ATWOOD There were a lot of gods. Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. MARGARET ATWOOD Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. They hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so... MARGARET ATWOOD Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the brig... MARGARET ATWOOD The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by ... MARGARET ATWOOD There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication. MARGARET ATWOOD The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one. MARGARET ATWOOD Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Secon... MARGARET ATWOOD Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. MARGARET ATWOOD We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy? MARGARET ATWOOD The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betr... MARGARET ATWOOD Put yourself in a different room, that's what the mind is for. MARGARET ATWOOD The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose MARGARET ATWOOD I think of this as a democratizing device. MARGARET ATWOOD I'm curious. If someone says 'Don't open that door', I'm right there! MARGARET ATWOOD The main thing is to keep yourself awake [on writing] MARGARET ATWOOD For years I wanted to be older, and now I am. MARGARET ATWOOD He's very in depth, on the dark side. He's interested in structure and how things work. After readin... MARGARET ATWOOD The Orange prize has been pivotal in the careers of many women writers - it's given them that extra ... MARGARET ATWOOD Just think of it as a very, very long pen. MARGARET ATWOOD Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked; as I never was when I was not one MARGARET ATWOOD This above all, to refuse to be a victim. MARGARET ATWOOD We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups. MARGARET ATWOOD A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. MARGARET ATWOOD Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are hum... MARGARET ATWOOD They all disowned their parents long ago, the way you are supposed to MARGARET ATWOOD You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer. MARGARET ATWOOD Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the Un... MARGARET ATWOOD Any death is stupid from the viewpoint of whoever is undergoing it, Adam One used to say, because no... MARGARET ATWOOD Also I could hear Amanda’s voice: Why are you being so weak? Love’s never a fair trade. So Jimmy... MARGARET ATWOOD I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices,... MARGARET ATWOOD Life is warped. I'm just in sync. MARGARET ATWOOD I thought everyone would be familiar with this figure: if I'd studied a thing in school I assumed it... MARGARET ATWOOD We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves. MARGARET ATWOOD My parents are like younger, urchinlike brothers and sisters whose faces are dirty and who blurt out... MARGARET ATWOOD Now we come to forgiveness. Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important thing... MARGARET ATWOOD Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe. MARGARET ATWOOD Human tool-makers always make tools that will help us get what we want, and what we want hasn't chan... MARGARET ATWOOD She doesn't think it's a good idea to know the future, because you can hardly ever change it, so why... MARGARET ATWOOD The possibility of injury or death was a strong attraction: as the online world became more and more... MARGARET ATWOOD