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91c01f9
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This is how it starts, among the closed circles of the marooned, the shipwrecked, the besieged: jealousy, dissention, a breach in the groupthink walls. Then the entry of the foe, the murderer, the shadow slipping in through the door we forgot to lock because we were distracted by our darker selves: nursing our minor hatreds, indulging our petty resentments, yelling at one another, tossing the crockery.
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Margaret Atwood |
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56e4fb9
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I used to jog but it's bad for the knees. Too much beta carotene turns you orange, too much calcium gives you kidney stones. Health kills.
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humor
sarcasm
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Margaret Atwood |
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6d02d02
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The cicadas pierce the air with their searing one-note calls; dust eddies across the roads; from the weedy patches at the verges, grasshoppers whir. The leaves of the maples hang from their branches like limp gloves; on the sidewalk my shadow crackles.
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Margaret Atwood |
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284aa38
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In Hope.
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Margaret Atwood |
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8c3f157
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Homo sapiens doesn't seem able to cut himself off at the supply end. He's one of the few species that doesn't limit reproduction in the face of dwindling resources. In other words - and up to a point, of course - the less we eat, the more we fuck.' 'How do you account for that?' said Jimmy. 'Imagination,' said Crake, 'Men can imagine their own deaths, they can see them coming, and the mere thought of impending death acts like an aphrodisiac..
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Margaret Atwood |
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f037230
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They say: Speak for us (to whom?) Some say: Avenge us (on whom?) Some say: Take our place. Some say: Witness Others say (and these are women) Be happy for us.
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Margaret Atwood |
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1bfce21
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At school, he enacted a major piece of treachery against his parents. His right hand was Evil Dad, and his left was Righteous Mom. Evil Dad blustered and theorized and dished out pompous bullshit. Righteous Mom complained and accused. In Righteous Mom's cosmology, Evil Dad was the sole source of hemmoroids, kleptomania, global conflict, bad breath, tectonic-plate fault lines, and clogged drains, as well as every migraine headache and menstr..
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Margaret Atwood |
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28de41d
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It's like the Vatican's porn collection," Zeb told her. "Safe in our hands."
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Margaret Atwood |
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22f411f
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A]nother thing about myths: they gather in and circumscribe their target audience. They make a collection into a collective.
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Margaret Atwood |
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b611326
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A bachelor, a studio, those were the names for that kind of apartment. Separate entrance it would say in the ads, and that meant you could have sex, unobserved.
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sex
housing
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Margaret Atwood |
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8113b75
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He would have died soon, but more painfully. Anyway, it was Urban Bloodshed Limitation. First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled.
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fighting
survival
self-defense
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Margaret Atwood |
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0156b3b
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But maybe he was destructive by nature since he messed up every girl he touched
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Margaret Atwood |
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eb3ce82
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Oryx," he says. "I know you're there." He repeats the name. It's not even her real name, which he'd never known anyway; it's only a word. It's a mantra. Sometimes he can conjure her up. At first she's pale and shadowy, but if he can say her name over and over, then maybe she'll glide into his body and be present with him in his flesh, and his hand on himself will become her hand. But she's always been evasive, you can never pin her down. To..
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Margaret Atwood |
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2119388
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It's kind of shocking to hear Toby called a babe; sort of like calling God a studmuffin.
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Margaret Atwood |
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bdf3cc2
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These albums were thick with babies, but my replicas thinned out as I grew older, as if the population of my duplicates had been hit with some plague.
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Margaret Atwood |
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5fcdab3
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And still, what a risk he'd taken. The woman was like an amateur car bomb: you never knew when she would explode or who she would take down with her when she did.
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Margaret Atwood |
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acafc7b
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A man in a cloud, with icicle teeth and eyes of fire.
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Margaret Atwood |
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2fe47ff
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What he really wanted was revenge. But against whom, and for what? Even if he had the energy for it, even if he could focus and aim, such a thing would be less than useless.
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Margaret Atwood |
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7e458c1
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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.
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embarrassment
parents
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Margaret Atwood |
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2feb025
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But it's love that does us in.
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Margaret Atwood |
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23a0822
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They did not set out to disappoint their father, not on purpose, but neither did they wish to shoulder the lumpy, enervating burden of the mundane.
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Margaret Atwood |
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be88659
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This goes along with another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
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Margaret Atwood |
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cdea852
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She walks towards Karen and Karen feels a cool wind against her skin, and the grandmother holds out both of her knobby old hands, and Karen puts out her own hands and touches her, and her hands feel as if sand is falling over them. There's a smell of milkweed flowers and garden soil. The grandmother keeps on walking; her eyes are light blue, and her cheek comes against Karen's, cool grains of dry rice. Then she's like the dots on the comic ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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b0b9b1d
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Nobody wanted to be sexless, but nobody wanted to be nothing but sex
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Margaret Atwood |
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98daddb
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Like the trains, she's never on time and always departing. Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.
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Margaret Atwood |
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aa49217
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I sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing. Treacherous ground, my own territory. I become the earth I set my ear against, for rumors of the future.
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Margaret Atwood |
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4f7a0d5
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What was about this that made us feel we deserved it?
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Margaret Atwood |
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488e16d
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You need to give money when someone gives you a knife. So the bad luck won't cut you. I wouldn't like it for you to be cut by the bad luck, Jimmy.
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money
luck
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Margaret Atwood |
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e5a50c8
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Because they were ready for us, and waiting. 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.
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Margaret Atwood |
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bcbe7c9
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None of this happens, of course. Or it does happen, but not so you would notice. It happens in another dimension of space.
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Margaret Atwood |
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292c353
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That was all quite long ago. I see it in retrospect, indulgently, from the point I've reached now. But how else could I see it. We can't really travel to the past, no matter how we try. if we do, it's as tourists.
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Margaret Atwood |
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8a634a5
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A thing is valued, only if it is rare and hard to get.
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Margaret Atwood |
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67d8f9b
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Those walls and bars are there for a reason,' said Crake. ' Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases
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Margaret Atwood |
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fe28c38
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The leader had a beard and was wearing a caftan that looked as if it had been sewn by elves on hash.
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Margaret Atwood |
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19ca4cd
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There's always a black market, there's always something that can be exchanged.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ffafc3b
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Another of those things that must be true because everyone else agrees they are, although they don't seem so to me.
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Margaret Atwood |
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73df772
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History (that list of ballooning wishes, flukes, bent times, plunges and mistakes clutched like parachutes) is rolling itself up in your head at one end unrolling at the other.
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Margaret Atwood |
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dd69e0a
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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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615540f
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Sometimes I wish she would just shut up and let me walk in peace. But I'm ravenous for news, any kind of news; even if it's false news, it must mean something.
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Margaret Atwood |
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e6a1f8a
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The heart with letters on it shining like a light bulb through the trim hole painted in the chest, art history.
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Margaret Atwood |
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1c66149
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If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.
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Margaret Atwood |
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0a87920
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On the way home from school we go to the record store... [Cordelia] expects me to roll my eyes in ecstasy, the way she does; she expects me to groan. She knows the rituals, she knows how we're supposed to be behaving, now that we're in high school. 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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65fb2fb
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It's a wonder they can sit down at all, and when they walk, nothing touches their legs under the billowing skirts, except their shifts and stockings. They are like swans, drifting along on unseen feet; or else like the jellyfish in the waters of the rocky harbour near our house, when I was little, before I ever made the long sad journey across the ocean. They were bell-shaped and ruffled, gracefully waving and lovely under the sea; but if t..
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swans
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Margaret Atwood |
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f3472b0
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From nowhere, a word appears: Mesozoic. He can see the word, he can hear the word, but he can't reach the word. He can't attach anything to it. This is happening too much lately, this dissolution of meaning, the entries on his cherished wordlists drifting off into space.
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Margaret Atwood |