My parents are like younger, urchinlike brothers and sisters whose faces are dirty and who blurt out humiliating things that can neither be anticipated nor controlled. I sigh and make the best of it. I feel I’m older than they are, much older. I feel ancient.
Margaret Atwood
Related Take me to the height where success would seek my help to succeed! I ARE I feel like I'm really blessed and lucky that I have a very good social life outside of the gym,... ALY RAISMAN I don't feel that it's a phasing out, they just feel like they feel these younger players are ready ... BILL GUERIN I don't feel that it's a phasing out, they just feel like they feel these younger players are ready ... BILL GUERIN I don't feel that it's a phasing out, they just feel like they feel these younger players are r... BILL GUERIN Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now BOB DYLAN People come here to simply try and do well at whatever level they are capable of doing. It helps the... GWYN HOWAT I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES I admire runners older than I - they are now my heroes. I want to be like them as I grow older. FRANK SHORTER I had older brothers and sisters who were high achievers, and I felt different, misunderstood by my ... WILLIE AAMES They are the first people I really knew. They're like my brothers and sisters. COLIN RAY My brothers are both 6 ft. 5 in., and if you have younger brothers who are bigger than you then you ... NICK MORAN I am a little older and understand the nature of the business - the older you get the more your skil... RANDY MOSS It's a huge factor. But we feel like we're a lot older than we are. We've played over 60 games toget... COREY BREWER We're collecting things that are very ancient and even older than our solar system. We are literally... DON BROWNLEE Market research shows that older women like seeing older women in ads, and that younger women do, to... ISABELLA ROSSELLINI Sometimes I feel older than my mum. BRITNEY SPEARS Older women know who they are, and that makes them more beautiful than younger ones. I like to see a... NAVEEN ANDREWS I have gone out with younger men, and they're great fun; they've got enthusiasm. Stamina! Bu... JERRY HALL The more the parents let those two things happen, the worse the outcomes are for the younger sibling... DR. BERT BURRASTON It's also very painful, because I feel, and I know, probably all women my age and older feel like we... BARBARA HERSHEY It's funny: when people always talk about the importance of role models, I used to think that wa... DEMETRI MARTIN I've dated men my age, younger than me and older. The only difference is the young ones are quic... LARA FLYNN BOYLE It's also very painful, because I feel, and I know, probably all women my age and older feel lik... BARBARA HERSHEY The difficult parts is that the (middle-aged kids) feel they are put in a position where they have t... MARC FREEDMAN As children grow older, the care of parents grows greater. They are afraid of their children falling... THOMAS WATSON One of the things that makes Youth Pride Day great is that they can be who they are and not get pres... CANDACE GINGRICH A lot of the programs on cable are things that are already familiar to older viewers and that they f... BILL CARROLL I have three older brothers, and each one of them has chosen one of my parents' education. Two o... BILL SKARSGARD My parents were on the Grand Ole Opry. They traveled all over the country singing hillbilly music. T... CHARLIE HADEN I thought, transgender people are much worse off than I am. That's why they're willing to ri... CHAZ BONO Older men are wiser and that is much cooler to me. I've never been one for going out clubbing or... EMILIA FOX I played with my brothers all the time. It was good competition with (Ken), who is only two years ol... IKE NWAELELE I had older brothers, and I don't think there's anything worse than an older brother. They p... JOSS WHEDON Growing older doesn't mean that you are more mature than everyone who is younger than you. Maturity ... ABHYSHEQ SHUKLA As I'm getting older, I'm enjoying my vices so much more because I feel like I've deserv... BROOKE SHIELDS I love entertaining people; I strive to make them feel good, and they make me feel wonderful. To exp... TONY BENNETT There are people out there who are older who are cool. I want that. BILLY CORGAN When you're younger, you feel like work is work and relationships are supposed to be easy. As yo... VINCE VAUGHN sing the song and let people do the interpretation. It is your duty to sing the unsung songs and it ... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH The happiest moments are when we sit down and we feel the presence of our brothers and sisters, lay ... NHAT HANH I look younger; I feel younger. I'm in no rush to grow up or seem older to people. DANIELLE PANABAKER There are some concerns that are universal. Everyone wants to be loved, and everyone wants to feel l... TRACY CHAPMAN I have kept a diary, WITHNAIL AND I Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now. BOB DYLAN Ah - but I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now BOB DYLAN When I was younger, I believed my inconsistency was due to my youth. I believed that age would teach... MIKE YACONELLI I feel like when you're in your late teens and early 20s, you just don't think about certain... ST. LUCIA My parents are older, and they lead a somewhat sheltered life. It was difficult to talk with them ab... ANITA HILL For the younger sisters, we always look up to the older sisters because they're always ahead of us a... SERENA WILLIAMS I come just to make sure we don't count the soldiers as numbers. They are somebody's brothers, daugh... NORMA AVILES I've dated men my age, younger than me and older. The only difference is the young ones are quicker ... LARA FLYNN BOYLE I'm realizing that for so much of my life I had an older viewpoint; I saw things as an older per... JOHN TRAVOLTA Our concepts of aging really should be blurring because there are plenty of people who make it to ol... S. JAY OLSHANSKY I remember when I was younger I always looked up to the older guys. They always made me feel comfort... MARTIN KLIMES I like those older theaters - the acoustics are perfect, I mean, you just have that feel of there... BILLY GARDELL In a study that I just did, I found that it was older children, not younger children, who felt that ... ELLEN GALINSKY I think I used to sort of segregate things. Work was this and life was this and exercise was this. A... JANE KRAKOWSKI Diane Keaton, I've worked with her as a director, and I think she's a really intelligent wom... ANDIE MACDOWELL I had an older brother who passed away recently, an older sister and a younger brother. STEVE CASE I think that this is more real. I grew up in Garland and went to Garland High School, and I feel rig... LARRY FRAZIER What older men and younger women have in common is they are both suffering from different insecuriti... MARK BARROWCLIFFE I feel sorry for the poor kids whose parents feel they're qualified to teach them at home. Of co... DICK CAVETT The only day I remember of my parents' marriage was the day my dad walked out. As I stood there ... ELLIE GOULDING When you're older, you want to be scared because you understand more where the boundaries betwee... DAVID TENNANT One of my brothers, Eric, who is one year older than me, was actually the first one to start boxing,... MANDY BUJOLD When I was younger, I played sports and went to camp. As I got older, my parents began to instill in... KATHERINE SCHWARZENEGGER It’s amazing how when we were young we wanted to know what it felt like to be older and when we ar... DEWAYNE OWENS There are guys out here that are older, younger, shorter, taller, than me. But we all get a chance t... JOEL MAYS I blame and credit my brothers for my competitive fire within me. Growing up, I lost at everything! ... JENNIE FINCH My sisters are my best friends and my most staunch supporters. They're always there to help me t... MADELINE ZIMA I'm supposed to protect my family and do the best I can for them. I feel like my hands are tied. GREG BOYD As a society, I think older women are marginalized, but I think that has changed so much in the last... MELINDA MCGRAW I started golfing at a young age, and growing up with two older brothers, it made me mature a lot yo... LEXI THOMPSON I have lots of brothers and sisters, two of whom are younger than myself, so I rely on my phone, tex... DEVON AOKI I feel very lucky. The older I get, the more I see how random everything is, the luckier I feel to h... ETHAN PECK I have three children who are absolutely devastated. My older kids (understand) but my 5-year-old do... DANIELLE BIMBER If I don't explain or tell some of my experiences, I feel like I'm doing guys a disservice b... D'BRICKASHAW FERGUSON We have found that our audience range in age from teenager and even younger sometimes, children that... DAVE HOLLAND If there are people who are older and just can't get out to drive and have things to donate, they ca... JUDY RENO I like to branch out as much as I can, but I feel like the movies that are closest to my heart are &... JONATHAN LEVINE I feel like kids are the perfect psychic investigators of their parents, and kids understand their p... MIKE MILLS You can be all that you want to be. Keep dreaming and reach out to your dreams. LAILAH GIFTY AKITA I'm a lot older than my little brothers and sister, so I think I grew up babysitting them. JOSH HARTNETT You are the architect of your life. LAILAH GIFTY AKITA I feel bad for people who don't drink because when they wake up in the morning and get out of bed...... FRANK SINATRA I always thought I was going to be able to do some good things in this game, and I really feel like ... MICHAEL YOUNG Brothers and sisters, our democracy has been hi-jacked. Brothers and sisters, all of our total freed... ZACK DE LA ROCHA I actually feel most at home when I find people who make me feel really dumb, who are brilliant at t... MICK EBELING That's pretty much who I am. I like to get riled up. I feel like it brings the best out of me an... MALIK JACKSON I have three older brothers, and we all have different combinations of parents. My father was the be... INARA GEORGE I don't feel any older now than when I was 70. JOHN PATRICK I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now. From the back pages BOB DYLAN Americans and French are notoriously monolingual, especially earlier generations. Language is a sens... KATHLEEN FLINN Somehow, I've been blessed to be able to have the young spirit inside - not feel like every year... RICKEY HENDERSON I feel like things are weirder in our food production chain than I can even make up. I wouldn't ... ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN Only younger brothers will understand me. We're following in the footsteps of older brothers. Yo... WLADIMIR KLITSCHKO As I have gotten older, I am more of an independent woman, and my mom and I have our own lives, but ... AMANDA FULLER People who are feeling bullied and people who feel like outsiders should talk to their parents and g... NICK JONAS My wigs are ever changing in height, width, color, size. They make me feel happy. Wearing them makes... NICKI MINAJ
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 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 My self is a thing that I must now compose...as one composes a speech. What I must present is a 'mad... MARGARET ATWOOD