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84a79ce
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Ah men, why do you want all this attention? I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutely necessary. What do you have to offer me I can't find otherwise
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men
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Margaret Atwood |
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c76efb6
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Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.
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social-commentary
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Margaret Atwood |
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2303e63
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Was this a betrayal, or was it an act of courage? Perhaps both. Neither one involves forethought: such things take place in an instant, in an eyeblink. This can only be because they have been rehearsed by us already, over and over, in silence and darkness; in such silence, such darkness, that we are ignorant of them ourselves. Blind but sure-footed, we step forward as if into a remembered dance.
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dream
free-will
decision
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Margaret Atwood |
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226fbbf
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There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt with.
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secretive
powerful
power
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Margaret Atwood |
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12c3980
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I planned my death carefully, unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it.
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Margaret Atwood |
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37c8d24
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The male frog in mating season," said Crake, "makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogs--it's been documented--discover if they position themselves in empty drainpipes, the pipe acts as a voice amplifier and the small frog appears much larger than it really is." So?" So that's what art is for th..
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Margaret Atwood |
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c3bd892
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But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion. She renders herself up, is blotted out; enters the darkness of her own body, forgets her name. Immolation is what she wants, however briefly. To exist without boundaries.
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Margaret Atwood |
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068cfc0
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Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.
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romance
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Margaret Atwood |
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bab3e9a
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Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?
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Margaret atwood |
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1d85795
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No more photos. Surely there are enough. No more shadows of myself thrown by light onto pieces of paper, onto squares of plastic. No more of my eyes, mouths, noses, moods, bad angles. No more yawns, teeth, wrinkles. I suffer from my own multiplicity. Two or three images would have been enough, or four, or five. That would have allowed for a firm idea: This is she. As it is, I'm watery, I ripple, from moment to moment I dissolve into my othe..
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Margaret Atwood |
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927ecb7
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It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and settle slowly.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3b3fbe3
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When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things get in that ought to be shut out. The locks lose their powers. The guards go to sleep. The passwords fail.
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Margaret Atwood |
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1525a0d
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You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn't necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones.
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Margaret Atwood |
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5837333
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The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives. We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.
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Margaret Atwood |
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c61541c
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There is no fool like an educated fool...
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Margaret Atwood |
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1add8cd
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We are survivors, of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something.
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Margaret Atwood |
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e04bc70
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She wasn't ready to settle down, she told her friends. That was one way of putting it. Another was would have been that she had not found anyone to settle down with. There had been several men in her life, but they hadn't been convincing. They'd been somewhat like her table - quickly acquired, brightened up a little, but temporary. The time for that kind of thing was running out, however. She was tired of renting.
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Margaret Atwood |
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9f69c12
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If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it's not easy being quiet and good, it's like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you've already fallen over; you don't seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
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Margaret Atwood |
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6d37891
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So this was the rest of his life. It felt like a party to which he'd been invited, but at an address he couldn't actually locate. Someone must be having fun at it, this life of his; only, right at the moment, it wasn't him.
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Margaret Atwood |
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b58f1fd
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When they're gone out of his head, these words, they'll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.
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Margaret Atwood |
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44f2dd8
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A Paradox, the doughnut hole. Empty space, once, but now they've learned to market even that. A minus quantity; nothing, rendered edible. I wondered if they might be used-metaphorically, of course-to demonstrate the existence of God. Does naming a sphere of nothingness transmute it into being?
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religion
philosophy
marketing
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Margaret Atwood |
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f41163b
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The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. The difference between and . Lay is always passive.
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Margaret Atwood |
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8038dd4
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I wish I didn't have to think about you. You wanted to impress me; well, I'm not impressed, I'm disgusted...You wanted to make damn good and sure I'd never be able to turn over in bed again without feeling that body beside me, not there but tangible, like a leg that's been cut off. Gone but the place still hurts.
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sleep
phantom-limb
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Margaret Atwood |
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138ccdb
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Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.
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Margaret Atwood |
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1a0934a
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Today on the way home, it snows. Big, soft caressing flakes fall onto our skin like cold moths; the air fills with feathers.
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Margaret Atwood |
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df13267
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There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.
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Margaret Atwood |
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2b8fa6f
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I see that there will be no end to imperfection, or to doing things the wrong way. Even if you grow up, no matter how hard you scrub, whatever you do, there will always be some other stain or spot on your face or stupid act, somebody frowning.
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Margaret Atwood |
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e014b9b
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Genius is an infinite capacity for causing pain.
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Margaret Atwood |
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0f1111a
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Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings...but there's something dead about it, something deserted.
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solitude
sex
fantasy
love
arms
lack
body
need
desire
dead
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Margaret Atwood |
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ee51ff0
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I remember the rules, rules that were never spelled out but every woman knew: Don't open your door to a stranger, even if he says he is the police. Make him slide his ID under the door. Don't stop on the road to help a motorist pretending to be in trouble. Keep the locks on and keep going. If anyone whistles, don't turn to look. Don't go into a laundromat, by yourself, at night. I think about laundromats. What I wore to them: shorts, jeans,..
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Margaret Atwood |
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d644e52
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I stand on the corner, pretending I am a tree.
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Margaret Atwood |
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cd6e9a3
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how much needless despair has been caused by a series of biological mismatches, a misalignment of the hormones and pheromones? Resulting in the fact that the one you love so passionately won't or can't love you. As a species we're pathetic that way: imperfectly monogamous.
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Margaret Atwood |
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5b4d128
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I did not know how to paint or even what to paint, but I knew I had to begin.
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Margaret Atwood |
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f7d73c8
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Now that I am dead, I know everything.
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Margaret Atwood |
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179a73b
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Because you may think a bed is a peaceful thing, Sir, and to you it may mean rest and comfort and a good night's sleep. But it isn't so for everyone; and there are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed.
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Margaret Atwood |
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0c28f03
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he might die for her, but living for her would be quite different.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ea171f2
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Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d38f5fc
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While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me--drawing on my skin--not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings. But underneath that is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. It's like being wake..
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Margaret Atwood |
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0679c9e
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At moments like this I envy those who have found a safe haven in which to bestow their hearts; or perhaps I envy them for having a heart to bestow. I often feel that I myself am without one, and possess in its stead merely a heart shaped stone.
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Margaret Atwood |
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e7c97d1
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I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened.
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Margaret Atwood |
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8b9e960
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Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly. Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God.
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Margaret Atwood |
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9e86512
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This is the middle of my life, I think of it as a place, like the middle of a river, the middle of a bridge, halfway across, halfway over. I'm supposed to have accumulated things by now: possessions, responsibilities, achievements, experience and wisdom. I'm supposed to be a person of substance.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d02af95
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In his student days, he used to argue that if a woman has no other course open to her but starvation, prostitution, or throwing herself from a bridge, then surely the prostitute, who has shown the most tenacious instinct for self-preservation, should be considered stronger and saner than her frailer and no longer living sisters. One couldn't have it both ways, he'd pointed out: if women are seduced and abandoned they're supposed to go mad, ..
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prostitution
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Margaret Atwood |
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9d27025
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I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.
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Margaret Atwood |