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52b1b89
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It's Paradise, but we can't get out of it. And anything you can't get out of is Hell.
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Margaret Atwood |
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020d5a1
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One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope. In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?
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hope
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Margaret Atwood |
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b0b3bf7
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We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.
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spiritual
life
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Margaret Atwood |
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134e238
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On these occasions I read quickly, voraciously, almost skimming, trying to get as much into my head as possible before the next long starvation. If it were eating it would be gluttony of the famished; if it were sex it would be a swift furtive stand-up in an alley somewhere.
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Margaret Atwood |
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60e50a8
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When I was younger I used to think that if I could hug myself tight enough I could make myself smaller, because there was never enough room for me, at home or anywhere, but if I was smaller then I would fit in.
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Margaret Atwood |
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fd24219
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I am tempted to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ad868d6
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The objects I chose were designed to hold something, but I didn't fill them up. They remained empty. They were little symbolic shrines to thirst.
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thirst
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Margaret Atwood |
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6ad9246
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There are things I need to ask her. Not what happened, back then in the time I lost, because now I know that. I need to ask her why. If she remembers. Perhaps she's forgotten the bad things, what she said to me, what she did. Or she does remember them, but in a minor way, as if remembering a game, or a single prank, a single trivial secret, of the kind girls tell and then forget. She will have her own version. I am not the centre of her s..
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Margaret Atwood |
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7a7adc0
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We've learned to see the world in gasps.
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Margaret Atwood |
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103669b
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Nevertheless, blood is thicker than water, as anyone knows who has tasted both.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d742f36
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Now we come to forgiveness. Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.
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heaven
hell
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Margaret Atwood |
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9255aba
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Never mind. Point being that you don't have to get too worked up about us, dear educated minds. You don't have to think of us as real girls, real flesh and blood, real pain, real injustice. That might be too upsetting. Just discard the sordid part. Consider us pure symbol. We're no more real than money.
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Margaret Atwood |
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11ad54b
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Who is to say that prayers have any effect? On the other hand, who is to say they don't? I picture the gods, diddling around on Olympus, wallowing in the nectar and ambrosia and the aroma of burning bones and fat, mischievous as a pack of ten-year-olds with a sick cat to play with and a lot of time on their hands. 'Which prayer shall we answer today?' they ask one another. 'Let's cast the dice! Hope for this one, despair for that one, and w..
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Margaret Atwood |
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e78d12c
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The past is so much safer, because whatever's in it has already happened. It can't be changed; so, in a way, there's nothing to dread.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3ea1607
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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.
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life
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Margaret Atwood |
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fbc30ab
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Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?
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Margaret Atwood |
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2e8d21f
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We love each other, that's true whatever it means, but we aren't good at it; for some it's a talent, for others only an addiction.
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Margaret Atwood |
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4332479
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People dressed in a certain kind of clothing are never wrong. Also they never fart.
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Margaret Atwood |
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9fbbb17
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There's blood, a taste I remember. It tastes of orange popsicles, penny gumballs, red licorice, gnawed hair, dirty ice.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3e2d0ff
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Anyway, maybe there weren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. It never learned, it made the same cretinous mistakes over and over, trading short-term gain for long-term pain.
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Margaret Atwood |
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b90775f
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I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born
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Margaret Atwood |
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b4bc493
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But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.
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Margaret Atwood |
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a594df2
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He stops, looks up at this window, and I can see the white oblong of his face. We look at each other. I have no rose to toss, he has no lute. But it's the same kind of hunger.
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Margaret Atwood |
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df00333
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expectation isn't the same as desire
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Margaret Atwood |
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46bc524
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All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.
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writing
stories
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Margaret Atwood |
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ce7ec48
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There were no men in this painting, but 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 slip..
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Margaret Atwood |
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a8114e8
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The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish, drying on sand.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3912abd
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Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.
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Margaret Atwood |
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81e2e60
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I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight.
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nature
life
sun
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Margaret Atwood |
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8b89c80
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I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more.
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sewing
technology
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Margaret Atwood |
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65b8570
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The trickle-down theory of economics has it that it's good for rich people to get even richer because some of their wealth will trickle own, through their no doubt lavish spending, upon those who stand below them on the economic ladder. Notice that the metaphor is not that of a gushing waterfall but of a leaking tap: even the most optimistic endorsers of this concept do not picture very much real flow, as their language reveals" pg. 102."
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Margaret Atwood |
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ced6caf
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Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.
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Margaret Atwood |
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2f90426
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Don't misunderstand me. I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and far more complicated. But sometimes it's hard to put up with.
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Margaret Atwood |
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223d5e9
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Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave - The water below is as dark as the grave, And maybe you'll sink in your little blue boat - It's hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat
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dark
handmaids
myths-series
the-myths
hopeful
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Margaret Atwood |
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cbee28f
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What's with her?" says the painter. "She's mad because she's a woman," Jon says. This is something I haven't heard for years, not since high school. Once it was a shaming thing to say, and crushing to have it said about you, by a man. It implied oddness, deformity, sexual malfunction. I go to the living room doorway. "I'm not mad because I'm a woman," I say. "I'm mad because you're an asshole."
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Margaret Atwood |
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40eb79b
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What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave..
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work
english-literature
university
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Margaret Atwood |
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b6bcc15
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the difference between stupid and ignorant was that ignorant could learn.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ac1c8ee
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To go from a familiar thing, however undesirable, into the unknown, is always a matter for apprehension, and I suppose that is why so many people are afraid to die.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d9b6443
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It's a lifelong failing: she has never been prepared. But how can you have a sense of wonder if you're prepared for everything? Prepared for the sunset. Prepared for the moonrise. Prepared for the ice storm. What a flat existence that would be.
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Margaret Atwood |
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bf8a020
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You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can't get me out of the story. I'm the plot, babe, and don't ever forget it.
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humor-inspirational
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Margaret Atwood |
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58e051f
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Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d6970de
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Where were we? I've forgotten. He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever. Right. Yes. The usual choices.
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love
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margaret atwood |
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c00a5eb
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When did the body first set out on its own adventures? Snowman thinks; after having ditched its old travelling companions, the mind and the soul, for whom it had once been considered a mere corrupt vessel or else a puppet acting out their dramas for them, or else bad company, leading the other two astray. it must have got tired of the soul's constant nagging and whining and the anxiety-driven intellectual web-spinning of the mind, distracti..
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Margaret Atwood |
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3b0d9eb
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These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.
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Margaret Atwood |