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0385779
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We're all watching him. It's the one thing we can really do, and it is not for nothing: if he were to falter, fail, or die, what would become of us? No wonder he's like a boot, hard on the outside, giving shape to a pulp of tenderfoot. That's just a wish. I've been watching him for some time and he's given no evidence, of softness. But watch out, Commander, I tell him in my head. I've got my eye on you. One false move and I'm dead. Still, i..
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Margaret Atwood |
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283f958
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Via the conduit of a wild dog pack, she has now made the ultimate Gift to her fellow Creatures, and has become part of God's great dance of proteins.
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Margaret Atwood |
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13d18fb
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speech to him was a task, a battle, words mustered behind his beard and issued one at a time, heavy and square like tanks.
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words
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Margaret Atwood |
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0399c15
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To be rendered unconscious; to lie exposed, without shame, at the mercy of others; to be touched, incised, plundered, remade - this is what they are thinking of when they look at him, with their widening eyes and slightly parted lips.
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Margaret Atwood |
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5ff879f
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her face might be kindly if she would smile
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Margaret Atwood |
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6eb2852
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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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7e478d7
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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. In the paint of the washroom cubicle someone unknown had scratched: Aunt Lydia sucks. It was like a flag waved from a hilltop in rebellion. The mere idea..
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rebellion
sex
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Margaret Atwood |
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fb79de5
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These days I script whole fights, in my head, and the reconciliations afterwards, too.
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Margaret Atwood |
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20363ef
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Whoever cares the most will lose.
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Margaret Atwood |
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b4e9c26
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Her face is silting up, like a pond; layers are accumulating. Every once in a while, when she can afford the time, she spends a few days at a spa north of the city, drinking vegetable juice and having ultrasound treatments, in search of her original face, the one she knows is under there somewhere; she comes back feeling toned up and virtuous, and hungry.
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aging-gracefully
youthfulness
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Margaret Atwood |
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771356a
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Some people write letters, in the library.
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library
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Margaret Atwood |
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2ad8fbb
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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. "Don't even think about it," he tells himself. Sex is like drink, it's bad to start brooding about it too early in the day." --
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Margaret Atwood |
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4287954
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It's okay, mummy's in there lying on the floor. She'll be alright in an hour or so.
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inspirational
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Margaret Atwood |
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3626cab
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Stick a shovel in the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light.
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the-blind-assassin
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Margaret Atwood |
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19befbb
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I was stuck in Port Ticonderoga, proud bastion of the common-and-garden variety button and of lower-priced long johns for the budget-minded shoppers. I would stagnate here, nothing would ever happen to me, I would end up an old-maid like Miss Violence, pitied and derided. This at the bottom was my fear. I wanted to be elsewhere, but I saw no way to get there. Once in a while, I found myself hoping that I would be abducted by white slavers, ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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34cc514
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Each thing is valid and really there. It is through a field of such valid objects that I must pick my way, every day and in every way. I put a lot of effort into making such distinctions. I need to make them. I need to be very clear, in my own mind.
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Margaret Atwood |
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030f585
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They seem close, the stars, but they're far away. Their light is millions, billions of years out of date. Messages with no sender.
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Margaret Atwood |
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b5b8988
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There had been something willed about it though, his ignorance. Or not willed, exactly: structured. He'd grown up in walled spaces, and then he had become one. He had shut things out.
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Margaret Atwood |
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274240d
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When you focus on details like this - close up, really clear, totally useless - you know you're in shock
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Margaret Atwood |
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81f0d64
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Knowing this secret, being the only one chosen to know, makes me feel important in a way. But it's a negative importance, it's the importance of a blank sheet of paper. I can know because I don't count. I feel singled out, but also bereft.
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importance
secrets
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Margaret Atwood |
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b8c7e0b
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But she went to tell the bees. She felt like an idiot doing it, but she'd promised. She remembered that it wasn't enough just to think at them: you had to say the words out loud. Bees were the messengers between this world and the other worlds, Pilar had said. Between the living and the dead. They carried the Word made air.
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words
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Margaret Atwood |
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746dd25
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Real painters grunt like Marlon Brando
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Margaret Atwood |
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b361b17
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This world is not enough, but it will have to do. You can either hold on or let go.
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poetry
true-stories
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Margaret Atwood |
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e7babe3
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Is that what writing amounts to? The voice your ghost would have, if it had a voice?
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Margaret Atwood |
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ebcbfa4
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They meet in church basements and offer bandages to those wounded by the shrapnel of exploding families.
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Margaret Atwood |
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0767614
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That image - of a little child being suffocated, or almost suffocated, by others who thought the whole thing was a game - melded with the furtive nocturnal slugs, and my solitary pacing and singing, and the separate, claustrophobic stairway, and the charmless abstract painting, and the gold-framed mirror, and the slithery green satin bedspread, and became inseperable from them. It wasn't a cheerful composite. As a memory, it is more like a ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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594c2ce
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The people in the chaos cannot learn. They cannot understand what they are doing to the sea and the sky and the plants and the animals. They cannot understand that they are killing them, and that they will end by killing themselves. And there are so many of them, and each one of them is doing part of the killing, whether they know it or not. And when
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Margaret Atwood |
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2eaa514
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What fiendishness went on in kitchens across the country, in the name of providing food!
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Margaret Atwood |
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08f7659
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Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a grey moth and let go. You could not believe I was more than your echo.
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poetry
greek-mythology
mythology
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Margaret Atwood |
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3ada7a5
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His father was self-made, but his mother was constructed by others, and such edifices are notoriously fragile. Thus
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Margaret Atwood |
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6de3c4f
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Bless you. Be careful. Anyone intending to meddle with words needs such blessing, such warning.
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warning
writing
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Margaret Atwood |
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8c8c4dd
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I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for. There wasn't a lot of choice, but there was some, and this is what I chose.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d73fd8d
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According to Tobias, it was more difficult to seduce a stupid woman than an intelligent one because stupid women could not understand innuendo or even connect cause with effect.
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Margaret Atwood |
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7b5bc3f
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You should not be sad," he said, gazing at me with his melancholy, leathery walrus eyes. "It must be the love. But you are young and pretty, you will have time to be sad later." The French are connoisseurs of sadness, they know all the kinds. This is why they have bidets. "It is criminal, the love, " he said, patting my shoulder. "But none is worse."--"
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Margaret Atwood |
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fbb2f22
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It's hard to be afraid of a man who is sitting watching you put on hand lotion.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ebf50a2
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The human moral keyboard is limited, Adam One used to say: there's nothing you can play on it that hasn't been played before. And, my dear Friends, I am sorry to say this, but it has its lower notes.
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Margaret Atwood |
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e48ec7e
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It's wrong to give so much time over to mourning, she tells herself. Mourning and brooding. There's nothing to be accomplished by it.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3f8fd11
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It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time. Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.
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Margaret Atwood |
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94a7b81
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But what is a memorial, when you come right down to it, but a commemoration of wounds endured? Endured, and resented. Without memory, there can be no revenge.
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revenge
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Margaret Atwood |
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5ac52bf
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What mysteries remain to be revealed in the nervous system, that web of structures both material and ethereal, that network of threads that runs throughout the body, composed of a thousand Ariadne's clues, all leading to the brain, that shadowy central den where the human bones lie scattered and the monsters lurk
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Margaret Atwood |
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5417134
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I could do a good imitation of a competent young woman.
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women
life
womanhood
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Margaret Atwood |
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105c8f3
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Prayer is wanting. Jesus, Jesus he says, but he's not praying to Jesus, he's praying to you, not to your body or your face but to the space you hold at the centre, which is the shape of the universe. Empty.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ca3aae2
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I want to see what can be seen, of him, take him in, memorize him, save him up so I can live on the image, later: the lines of his body, the texture of his flesh, the glisten of sweat on his pelt, his long sardonic unrevealing face. I ought to have done that with Luke, paid more attention, to the details, the moles and scares, the singular creases; I didn't and he's fading. Day by day, night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless.
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Margaret Atwood |
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6b581b0
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Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.
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Margaret Atwood |