Also she went in for culture, which gave her a certain moral authority. It wouldn't now; but people believed, then, that culture could make you better - a better person. They believed it could uplift you, or the women believed it. They hadn't yet seen Hitler at the opera house.
Margaret Atwood
Related When she went top eight, I think it gave us a big, big boost. The girls sort of believed that anythi... JACK BAUERLE But one thing she [Rachel] did believe in was love. She believed that you could smell it, that you c... SARAH ADDISON ALLEN I come from a strong woman who believed - and my father believed - that anything a man could do, a w... KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE I felt from the get-go they believed in themselves, they believed they could compete. CINDY STEIN She believed it was a mission effort by him to do better things for herself and for her family. BRANDI GRISSOM I asked her if she believed you could ever truly understand another culture. I told her the longer I... LILY KING I had a serious library at my disposal, because my Popo believed that culture entered by osmosis and... ISABEL ALLENDE If you look at the shooting, the fact that we got 70 shots was amazing. I think that's a sign that t... AGNUS BERENATO I also learned that a person was not necessarily bad just because you did not agree with him, and th... HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON I have long believed taxpayers make better use of their money than the government ever could. KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON I have long believed taxpayers make better use of their money than the government ever could. KAY HUTCHISON My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me. JIM VALVANO I'm not certain, but I have a little gypsy blood in me. And my mother always told me that her gr... SAM RAIMI Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that h... BIBLE The guys played well for Thomas. They were sad because they believed we could do better, but they di... ROBERT BROWN I told him I believed in hell, and that certain people, like me, had to live in hell before they die... SYLVIA PLATH It was that she truly believed you could be fourteen when you learned how love could change the spee... JODI PICOULT I would play ball with Catherine, and hide and seek: Not a very challenging game in an open meadow, ... PHILIPPA GREGORY These guys still believed they could win it. Now they have to go to the next level. They have the de... HARRY NISSEN She believed in dreams, all right, but she also believed in doing something about them. When Prince ... WALT DISNEY COMPANY We believed that to understand literature, you had to understand its place in history and culture. M. H. ABRAMS "She believed in dreams, alright, but she
also believed in doing something about them. When Princ... WALT DISNEY One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it - they also believ... MARK TWAIN It was important for a person not to let their body or mind become slow and dull. Oba believed it wa... TERRY GOODKIND She always believed love was good and hate was much better. But, indifference would’ve made her a ... A.A. GUPTE His Presbyterian minster father had believed in a divine design, and Mozasu believed that life was l... MIN JIN LEE Attending a funeral would leave the average person insane, if they truly believed that sooner or lat... MOKOKOMA MOKHONOANA I have never felt that anything really mattered but knowing that you stood for the things in which y... ELEANOR ROOSEVELT We were the only people who believed we could make it this far. Hopefully we'll do it again. That's ... MARKEE MARTIN We talked about how the crowd could play a part and the way to keep them in the game was for us to s... DAN GONZALEZ So far in my career, I've achieved what I've achieved because I've believed that I could... CARMEN MARTON They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, yo... MICHAEL CRICHTON He firmly believed in what he was doing, and you couldn't sway him from that. It was wonderful to ha... HOPE LUGO Ought one to surrender to authority even if one believed that that authority was wrong? If the answe... RICHARD WRIGHT He believed in it, as certain good women believe in the leviathan--by faith, not by reason. JULES VERNE She is handling it really well, despite everything going on, and it's been so hard on her and her fa... LAVINIA MANN CUMMINGS Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is ... CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE Becky Vesey always gave good advice and she gave it with great conviction because she always believe... ROBERT A. HEINLEIN No, no, it was the relationships. That was that group. People believed that Rob and Laura were reall... DICK VAN DYKE It was shocking. They gave this guidance, but the stock didn't go down much right away because no on... BRENDAN BARNICLE People who joined the protest against censorship, believed that no one had the right to say what the... INGRAM BONDIN You were gullible," he said. And then, "When you were really little, you hated carrots. You wouldn't... JENNY HAN If you can walk away from a comedy thinking it was funny yet also feeling good about the people you ... GREG GARCIA Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt th... MOLLY IVINS I always believed that I could make it or I would never have spent so many years trying to get here. HELEN REDDY She believed it was her obligation to pay off (the debt), ... She was essentially a sex slave for th... JEANINE PIRRO (Sibley) was a devout Baptist and believed in having a strong moral fiber. He believed that if you a... JACK BAKER I never believed in much, but I believed in you NEIL YOUNG We believed we could do it, and that's all it takes. JENNY PFEIFFER Ela acreditava em anjo e, porque acreditava, eles existiam" | "She believed in angels, and, because ... CLARICE LISPECTOR And they, when they had heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, believed not. BIBLE Since the 1960s, mainstream media has searched out and co-opted the most authentic things it could f... DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF This is a crew that from stroke one today believed they could do it and they went out and took care ... CARLO FACCHINO If you don't like Cinderella because she seems so "naive" and "weak," listen to this quote from the ... WALT DISNEY COMPANY Our friends believed in us and in what I was doing. Perhaps they looked at us as some sort of an ide... GEORGE WEIN I was very impressed by Walt Disney and the idea that you could have a dream and you could realize i... RYAN GOSLING If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more fool... H. L. MENCKEN I turned to Abe with about 16 minutes left, when we were down by about 15, and I said, we can still ... KEVIN BETTENCOURT It was believed this type of compulsion could be treated. TOD TAMBERG They have no concrete idea how the intruder is entering the dorms, but they suspect that it is a tai... BERNARD WARD All his life, Klaus had believed that if you read enough books, you could solve any problem, but now... LEMONY SNICKET She was the kind of person who believed in the Lord and worshipped Him. She adored her grandchildren... BROOKE BUETTI You believed you could transcend the body as you aged, she tells herself. You believed you could ris... MARGARET ATWOOD We've never believed in WAP. I think it will take some time, probably, before people start realizing... ESKIL SIVERTSEN Prejudice of the learned. – The learned judge correctly that people of all ages have believed they... FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE When you reach the top, don’t forget about the cats who fought alongside you on the way there. May... ERIN HUNTER I had great pity on Ansje, because she always acted very happy, but I believed that it was really a ... DIET EMAN I honestly believed I would make it. I had the desire. A lot of people have the ability, but they do... JOE CARTER I, on the other hand, completely believed every single thing they wrote. I believed I was the worthl... SARAH FERGUSON It was, she believed, a simple and unassailable fact of life that if a woman went to epic lengths to... NICHOLAS EVANS In every single culture I encountered, there were always women who defied cultural norms to do what ... ZAINAB SALBI Honestly, being a 5'11" quarterback, not too many people think that you can play in the Nat... RUSSELL WILSON Martyrdom is evidence only of a man's honesty - it is no evidence that he is not mistaken. Men h... LYSANDER SPOONER Do you sometimes think, if I could just see Christ. If I could meet him. If I could talk to him pers... SOURCE UNKNOWN She was one gutsy lady who tried everything and fought for what she believed in. It (the program) is... CINDY FAUST She believed in you. You took advantage of her situation by taking her money, her car and her life. JOSEPH ROSS We are not into moral victories. Even though no one else thought we could win the game, we believed ... CHRIS CAPKO How was it that he haunted her imagination so persistently? What could it be? Why did she care for w... ELIZABETH GASKELL I have never felt that anything really mattered by the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for th... ELEANOR ROOSEVELT When I first ran for public office, it was with the passion and idealism of a young man who believed... JAMES MCGREEVEY Nobody originally believed that a two-foot-long rover could actually move around on Mars at all, muc... DONNA SHIRLEY We believed we could build a better search. We had a simple idea, that not all pages are created equ... SERGEY BRIN for once, you believed in yourself. you believed you were beautiful and so did the rest of the world... SARAH DESSEN I knew if we got together as a team we could, but it had to be a team thing; it couldn't just be one... JEAN BEST Rejecting people for who and what they are will not make you a better, more 'righteous' or more 'mor... CHRISTINA ENGELA We came into this season believing it was going to be a rebuilding year. The kids were the ones that... CHUCK MILLER It just proves what I've always believed. You can't let any one person take hold of your dreams; you... WILLIAM HENRY It's been pretty cool, ... I can't even describe it. It's amazing, but you try not to be shocked by ... JASON GORE At one time it was believed we had a site license and could install Microsoft products wherever we w... DAVID ROTH I have to be seen to be believed. QUEEN ELIZABETH II I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it. MARSHALL MCLUHAN I have to be seen to be believed. ELIZABETH II I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it. MARSHALL MCLUHAN We also all know people who could do so much more if only they believed in themselves. Like so many ... SHERYL SANDBERG In my experience, it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endu... C.S. LEWIS I believed enough in this project that I thought it would turn into something pretty big, so I sold ... CHARLES GREEN And it came to pass in Iconium, that they went both together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so ... BIBLE There was a time in childhood when I didn't yet know I was ugly. Then there was a time when I believ... C.S. LEWIS . . . Jess believed, that she thought he was the best. It was not the kind of best that counted eith... KATHERINE PATERSON It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handlin... VIRGINIA WOOLF
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