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1539673
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I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart. If you'd wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything and was more than willing to tell. That was before I discovered the virtues of scissors, the virtues of matches.
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writing-life
life-and-living
life-lessons
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Margaret Atwood |
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c5b55a6
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So many crucial events take place behind people's backs, when they aren't in a position to watch: birth and death, for instance. And the temporary oblivion of sex.
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Margaret Atwood |
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dacd734
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Arboreal, a fine word. Our arboreal ancestors, Crake used to say. Used to shit on their enemies from above while perched in trees. All planes and rockets and bombs are simply elaborations on that primate instinct.
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Margaret Atwood |
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dd84bb4
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I suppose it's everyone's fate to be reduced to quaintness by those younger than themselves.
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Margaret Atwood |
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cb78119
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I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again.
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Margaret Atwood |
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c09318c
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If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, she'd be thinking, try jumping off the roof: death's a sure-fire method for stopping time.
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youth
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Margaret Atwood |
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a6b69a2
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We are a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.
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Margaret Atwood |
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1eff5d9
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Experiences were what you got when you couldn't get what you wanted.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3e4b13e
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Your friend is intellectually honourable," Jimmy's mother would say. "He doesn't lie to himself."
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Margaret Atwood |
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8e44d58
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What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Literature is not only a mirror; it is also a map, a geography of the mind. Our literature is one such map, if we can learn to read it as our literature, as the product of who and where we have been. We need such a map desperately, we need to know about here, because here is where we live. For the ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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7d936fb
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she was afraid of losing her shape, spreading out, not being able to contain herself any longer, beginning (that would be worst of all) to talk a lot, to tell everybody, to cry.
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body-dysmorphic-disorder
anorexia-nervosa
dysmorphia
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Margaret Atwood |
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948aedc
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You can mean more than one. You can mean thousands. I'm not in any immediate danger, I'll say to you. I'll pretend you can hear me. But it's no good, because I know you can't.
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Margaret Atwood |
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a27062f
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More and more I feel like a letter--deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one.
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Margaret Atwood |
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78793b3
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She knows the rituals, she knows how we're supposed to be behaving...But I think these things are impenetrable and fraudulent, and I can't do them without feeling I'm acting.
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Margaret Atwood |
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18369b7
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They are as happy as they can be, given who they are. Though if they'd been different people they might have been happier.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3fcdec1
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Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing The world is full of women who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself if they had the chance. Quit dancing. Get some self-respect and a day job. Right. And minimum wage, and varicose veins, just standing in one place for eight hours behind a glass counter bundled up to the neck, instead of naked as a meat sandwich. Selling gloves, or something. Instead of what I do sell. You have to have talent to peddle ..
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counter
does
burned
troy
dancing
of
morning
margaret
house
helen
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Margaret Atwood |
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6a65fa3
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The reason they invented coffins, to lock the dead in, preserve them, they put makeup on them; they didn't want them spreading or changing into anything else. The stone with the name and date was on them to weight them down.
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Margaret Atwood |
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33b6ee6
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In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as possible. I pretend to myself that I would be quite happy in a hermit's cave, living on gruel, if someone else would make the gruel. Gruel, like so many other things, is beyond me.
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hermit
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Margaret Atwood |
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c3923c8
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The Loneliness of the Military Historian Confess: it's my profession that alarms you. This is why few people ask me to dinner, though Lord knows I don't go out of my way to be scary. I wear dresses of sensible cut and unalarming shades of beige, I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser's: no prophetess mane of mine, complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters. If I roll my eyes and mutter, if I clutch at my heart and scream in h..
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loneliness
historian
the
of
military
morning
house
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Margaret Atwood |
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9f2fe9d
|
Imagine a famine. Now imagine a piece of bread. Both of these things are real but you happen to be in the same room with only one of them. Put yourself into a different room, that's what the mind is for.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ab83652
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Women collect grievances, hold grudges and change shape. They pass hard, legitimate judgments, unlike the purblind guesses of men, fogged with romanticism and ignorance and bias and wish. Women know too much, they can neither be deceived nor trusted. I can understand why men are afraid of them, as they are frequently accused of being.
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women
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Margaret Atwood |
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d0297ea
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On the whole she fares better with the men, if they can work their way past the awkward preliminaries; if they can avoid calling her "little lady," or saying they weren't expecting her to be so feminine, by which they mean short. Though only the most doddering ones do that any more. If she weren't so tiny, though, she'd never get away with it. If she were six feet tall and built like a blockhouse; if she had hips. Then she'd be threatening,..
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Margaret Atwood |
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47e2a19
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You can't help what you feel, Moira said once, but you can help how you behave.
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Margaret Atwood |
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e22ca28
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Is anything wrong, dear? the old joke went. No, why? You moved. Just don't move.
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Margaret Atwood |
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29f44de
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I didn't want him to become gray and multi-dimensional and complicated like everyone else. Was every Heathcliff a Linton in disguise?
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Margaret Atwood |
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be80f4c
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The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil. It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top. Falling, falling, and not knowing when you will hit.
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Margaret Atwood |
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787cc9c
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The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it's a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that's unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn..
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youth
young-girls
the-blind-assassin
margaret-atwood
makeup
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Margaret Atwood |
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47aa220
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Perfection exacts a price, but it's the imperfect who pay it
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Margaret Atwood |
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de227ca
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I've been prepared for almost anything; except absence, except silence.
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Margaret Atwood |
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4e0bf2e
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Of course (said Oryx), having a money value was no substitute for love. Every child should have love, every person should have it. . . . but love was undependable, it came and then it went, so it was good to have a money value, because then at least those who wanted to make a profit from you would make sure you were fed enough and not damaged too much. Also there were many who had neither love nor a money value, and having one of these thin..
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money
worth
value
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Margaret Atwood |
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7a39a47
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You couldn't leave words lying around where our enemies might find them.
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Margaret Atwood |
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45061e5
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They didn't realize that her clumsiness was not the ordinary kind, not poor coordination. It was just because she wasn't sure where the edges of her body ended and the rest of the world began.
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world
philosophy
sense-of-self
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Margaret Atwood |
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70c318d
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By now you must have guessed: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, Take me to your leaders. Even I - unused to your ways though I am - would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them. Instead I will say, Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your ba..
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death
dreams
life
philosophy
sf
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Margaret Atwood |
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972a897
|
They had been pathetically eager to have the wedding in the family church. Their reaction though, as far as she could estimate the reactions of people who were now so remote from her, was less elated glee than a quiet, rather smug satisfaction, as though their fears about the effects of her university education, never stated but aways apparent, had been calmed at last. They had probably been worried she would turn into a high-school teacher..
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Margaret Atwood |
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5060a0a
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Even sex was no longer what it had once been, though he was still as addicted to it as ever. He felt jerked around by his own dick, as if the rest of him was merely an inconsequential knob that happened to be attached to one end of it. Maybe the thing would be happier if left to roam around on its own.
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Margaret Atwood |
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6324184
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it was about men, the kind who caused women to fall. I did not ascribe any intentions to these men. They were like the weather, they didn't have a mind. They merely drenched you or struck you like lightning and moved on, mindless as blizzards. Or they were like rocks, a line of sharp slippery rocks with jagged edges. You could walk with care along between the rocks, picking your steps, and if you slipped you'd fall and cut yourself, but it ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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418eb55
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I have periods now, like normal girls; I too am among the knowing, I too can sit out volleyball games and go to the nurse's for aspirin and waddle along the halls with a pad like a flattened rabbit tail wadded between my legs, sopping with liver-colored blood.
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women
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Margaret Atwood |
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bc1e412
|
When you alter yourself, the alterations become the truth...
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Margaret Atwood |
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3e356b7
|
Oblivion is increasingly attractive to the young, and even to the middle-aged, since why retain your brain when no amount of thinking can even begin to solve the problem?
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Margaret Atwood |
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3242d1f
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But if you happen to be a man, sometime in the future, and you've made it this far, please remember: you will never be subject to the temptation or feeling you must forgive, a man, as a woman. It's difficult to resist, believe me. But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.
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Margaret Atwood |
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c9b720f
|
You are a transitional generation, said Aunt Lydia. It is the hardest for you. We know the sacrifices you are being expected to make. It is hard when men revile you. For the ones who come after you, it will be easier. They will accept their duties with willing hearts. She did not say: Because they will have no memories, of any other way. She said: Because they won't want things they can't have.
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Margaret Atwood |
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2a4693c
|
Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, "I'll be dead," you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar. And so was God, because as soon as there's a past tense, there has to be a past before the past, and you keep going back in time until you get to I don't kno..
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Margaret Atwood |
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f19b704
|
And he couldn't stand to be nothing, to know himself to be nothing. He needs to be listened to, he needs to be heard. He needs at least the illusion of being understood.
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Margaret Atwood |
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81ef6d4
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Those in pain have no time for the pain they cause.
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Margaret Atwood |