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2f44dde
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I am not mad because I'm a woman... I'm mad because you're an asshole.
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Margaret Atwood |
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688e19d
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If you don't like it, change it, we said, to each other and to ourselves. And so we would change for the man, for another one. Change, we were sure, was for the better always. We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.
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Margaret Atwood |
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512aa40
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All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3d953ea
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But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell burst, the plummet of the car from a bridge.
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tragedy
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Margaret Atwood |
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82f0cd9
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I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew it meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your head, and then you make it real. So that's how they do it, I thought. I seemed never to have known that before.
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Margaret Atwood |
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949a6d9
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Life is warped. I'm just in sync.
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honesty
life
survival
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Margaret Atwood |
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a074255
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It's his word against the Commander's, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.
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Margaret Atwood |
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a7df47a
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Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy?
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fight-or-flight-response
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Margaret Atwood |
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c84607a
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I try to congure, to raise my own spirits, from wherever they are. I need to remember what they look like. I try to hold them still behind my eyes, their faces, like pictures in an album. But they won't stay still for me, they move, there's a smile and it's gone, their features curl and bend as if the paper's burning, blackness eats them. A glimpse, a pale shimmer on the air; a glow, aurora, dance of electrons, then a face again, faces. But..
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Margaret Atwood |
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625289d
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The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.
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journalists
media
newspapers
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Margaret Atwood |
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b47a2c8
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Strange how we decorate pain. These ribbons, for instance, and the small hard teardrops of blood. Who are they for? Do we think the dead care?
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pain
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margaret atwood |
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c50b5f3
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Instead I will say, "Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths." These are worth it. These are what I have come for."
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Margaret Atwood |
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91d5404
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Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance.
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Margaret Atwood |
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016e226
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Remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.
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feminism
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Margaret Atwood |
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93df9a6
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It had helped to keep her sane, that writing. Then, when time had begun again and real people had entered it, she'd abandoned it here. Now it's a whisper from the past. 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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049690f
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Sex is like a drink, it's bad to start brooding about it too early in the day.
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Margaret Atwood |
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6f9808a
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She said love was useless, because it led you into dumb exchanges in which you gave too much away, and then you got bitter and mean.
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Margaret Atwood |
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f0b7228
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There's more than one way to skin a cat, my father used to say; it bothered me, I didn't see why they would want to skin a cat even one way.
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humor
wisdom
method
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Margaret Atwood |
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9ae474a
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Mary: Some call this "Eve's curse," but I think that is stupid because the real curse of Eve was having to put up with the nonsense of Adam."
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Margaret Atwood |
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6fb180e
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He'd developed a strangely tender feeling towards such words, as if they were children abandoned in the woods and it was his duty to rescue them.
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Margaret Atwood |
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12f3ae4
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But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the young well, but they wish them ill also: they would like to eat them up, and absorb their vitality, and remain immortal themselves. Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past - the past of others, loaded on their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace.
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Margaret Atwood |
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a43c224
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He's lost something, some illusion I used to think was necessary to him. He's come to realize he too is human. Or is this a performance, for my benefit, to show me he's up-to-date? Maybe men shouldn't have been told about their own humanity. It's only made them uncomfortable. It's only made them trickier, slier, more evasive, harder to read.
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Margaret Atwood |
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fe69a69
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In the end, we'll all become stories. Or else we'll become entities. Maybe it's the same.
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Margaret Atwood |
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b9ecdf7
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When I get out of here, if I'm ever able to set this down, in any form, even in the form of one voice to another, it will be a reconstruction then too, yet another remove. It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too may parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can neve..
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Margaret Atwood |
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9052755
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This afternoon held that special quality of mournful emptiness I've connected with late Sunday afternoons ever since childhood: the feeling of having nothing to do.
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Margaret Atwood |
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21780b7
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Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.
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Margaret Atwood |
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621285f
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it's doors I'm afraid of because I can't see through them, its the door opening by itself in the wind I'm afraid of.
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door
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Margaret Atwood |
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e152552
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But hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. Once you've had a little, you start shaking if you don't get more.
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Margaret Atwood |
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2cf57c2
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Things that are falling apart encourage me: whatever else, I'm in better shape than they are.
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perspective
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Margaret Atwood |
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e756ac5
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People change, though, especially after they are dead.
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idealism
identity
redefine
redefining
impressions
reputation
reflection
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Margaret Atwood |
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3de3976
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I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
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Margaret Atwood |
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b0dffc0
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But the adjectives change," said Jimmy. "Nothing's worse than last year's adjectives."
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Margaret Atwood |
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874938a
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I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.
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shame
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Margaret Atwood |
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b2990fa
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Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn, by those who don't have time, by those who truly understand the word helpless. they dispense no thought with the calculation of risk and profit, they take no thought for the future, they're forced to spearpoint into the present tense. Thrown over a precipice, you fall or else you fly; you clutch at any hope, however unlikely; however - if I may use such an overworked word - mir..
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Margaret Atwood |
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9a76a46
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I want, I don't want. How can one live with such a heart?
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Margaret Atwood |
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e770e43
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Karen wasn't hard, she was soft, too soft. A soft touch. Her hair was soft, her smile was soft, her voice was soft. She was so soft there was no resistance. Hard things sank into her, they went right through her, and if she made a real effort, out the other side. Then she didn't have to see them or hear them, or even touch them.
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Margaret Atwood |
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2d66327
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Money does talk, but it has a limited vocabulary.
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Margaret Atwood |
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74bcc4b
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We battled in secret, undeclared, and after a while I no longer fought back because I never won. The only defense was flight, invisibility.
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Margaret Atwood |
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20a729a
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You believed you could transcend the body as you aged, she tells herself. You believed you could rise above it, to a serene, nonphysical realm. But it's only through ecstasy you can do that, and ecstasy is achieved through the body itself. Without the bone and sinew of wings, no flight. Without that ecstasy you can only be dragged further down by the body, into its machinery. Its rusting, creaking, vengeful, brute machinery.
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ecstasy
transcendence
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Margaret Atwood |
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baa73a6
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I'm not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don't know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder.
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girls
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Margaret Atwood |
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ff0be70
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It is always a mistake to curse back openly at those who are stronger than you unless there is a fence between.
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Margaret Atwood |
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60e97da
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Not a hope. I know where I am, and who, and what day it is. These are the tests, and I am sane. Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d0c3310
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Not real can tell us about real.
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Margaret Atwood |
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6df1202
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Something is unfolding, being revealed to me. I see that there's a whole world of of girls and their doings that has been unknown to me, and that I can be part of without making any effort at all. I don't have to keep up with anyone, run as fast, aim as well, make loud explosive noises, decode messages, die on cue. I don't have to think about whether I do these things well, as well as a boy. All I have to do is sit on the floor and cut fryi..
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girls
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Margaret Atwood |