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And Yes, I Know It's You; And That Is What We Will Come To, Sooner Or Later, When It's Even Darker Than It Is Now, When The Snow Is Colder, When It's Darkest And Coldest And Candles Are No Longer Any Use To Us And The Visibility Is Zero: Yes. It's Still You. It's Still You.

-Margaret Atwood

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And Yes, I Know

Margaret Atwood

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And Yes, I Know It's You; And That Is What We Will Come To, Sooner Or Later, When It's Even Darker Than It Is Now, When The Snow Is Colder, When It's Darkest And Coldest And Candles Are No Longer Any Use To Us And The Visibility Is Zero: Yes. It's Still You. It's Still You.

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We Understand More Than We Know.

Science And Fiction Both Begin With Similar Questions: What If? Why? How Does It All Work? But They Focus On Different Areas Of Life On Earth.

In Theory I Can Do Almost Anything; Certainly I Have Been Told How. In Practice I Do As Little As Possible. I Pretend To Myself That I Would Be Quite Happy In A Hermit's Cave, Living On Gruel, If Someone Else Would Make The Gruel. Gruel, Like So Many Other Things, Is Beyond Me.

The Best Way Of Keeping A Secret Is To Pretend There Isn't One.

Keeping Secrets

Love Blurs Your Vision; But After It Recedes, You Can See More Clearly Than Ever. It's Like The Tide Going Out, Revealing Whatever's Been Thrown Away And Sunk: Broken Bottles, Old Gloves, Rusting Pop Cans, Nibbled Fishbodies, Bones. This Is The Kind Of Thing You See If You Sit In The Darkness With Open Eyes, Not Knowing The Future.

My Parents Were Gardeners Themselves, And Perforce They Used Environmental Techniques Because It Was During The War, And You Didn't Have The New Sorts Of Chemicals.

I Don't Want To Look At Something That Determines Me So Completely.

I'm Bad At Picking Heroes.

Science Never Makes Things That Do Not Have To Do With What We Feel, By Which I Mean What We Want And What We Fear.

I Spent Much Of My Childhood In Northern Quebec, And Often There Was No Radio, No Television - There Wasn't A Lot To Entertain Us. When It Rained, I Stayed Inside Reading, Writing, Drawing.

Science Is A Tool, And We Invent Tools To Do Things We Want. It's A Question Of How Those Tools Are Used By People.

Where Do You Draw The Line, Between Love And Greed? We Never Did Know, We Always Wanted More. We Want To Take It All In, For One Last Time, We Want To Eat The World With Our Eyes.

...we Must Be A Beacon Of Hope, Because If You Tell People There's Nothing They Can Do, They Will Do Worse Than Nothing.

I Don't Want To See Anyone. I Lie In The Bedroom With The Curtains Drawn And Nothingness Washing Over Me Like A Sluggish Wave. Whatever Is Happening To Me Is My Own Fault. I Have Done Something Wrong, Something So Huge I Can't Even See It, Something That's Drowning Me. I Am Inadequate And Stupid, Without Worth. I Might As Well Be Dead.

We Thought We Were Running Away From The Grownups, And Now We Are The Grownups.

Craziness Was Considered Funny, Like All Other Things That Were In Reality Frightening And Profoundly Shameful.

Although From You I Far Must Roam, Do Not Be Broken Hearted. We Two, Who In The Souls Are One, Are Never Truly Parted.

I Didn't Go To School For A Full Year Until I Was 12. In The Summer I Was A Wild Child In The Woods, With No Shoes, And In The Fall It Was Back To The City, Shoe Shops And School.

Why Do Men Feel Threatened By Women?

As All Historians Know, The Past Is A Great Darkness, And Filled With Echoes. Voices May Reach Us From It; But What They Say To Us Is Imbued With The Obscurity Of The Matrix Out Of Which They Come; And Try As We May, We Cannot Always Decipher Them Precisely In The Clearer Light Of Our Day.

There Is Never Only One, Of Anyone

Whatever Is Silenced Will Clamor To Be Heard, Though Silently.

All Fat Women Look The Same; They All Look 42.

What Is It The I'll Want From You? Not Love: That Would Be Too Much To Ask. Not Forgiveness, Which Isn't Yours To Bestow. Only A Listener, Perhaps; Only Someone Who Will See Me. Don't Prettify Me Though, Whatever Else You Do: I Have No Wish To Be A Decorated Skull. But I Leave Myself In Your Hands. What Choice Do I Have? By The Time You Read This Last Page, That- If Anywhere- Is The Only Place I Will Be.

I've Been Involved In Activities With Other People Who Were Put In Jail. We Were Protesting The Closing Of The Prison Farm Program At The Prison I Used In A Previous Book, Alias Grace. Some Of Us Also Put Up Money In Order To Save The Heirloom Herd Of Cows There. So I Own Half A Cow!

We Are Silent, Considering Shortfalls. There's Not Much Time Left, For Us To Become What We Once Intended. Jon Had Potential, But It's Not A Word That Can Be Used Comfortably Any More. Potential Has A Shelf-life.

I'm A Refugee From The Past, And Like Other Refugees I Go Over The Customs And Habits Of Being I've Left Or Been Forced To Leave Behind Me, And It All Seems Just As Quaint, From Here, And I Am Just As Obsessive About It.

Human Reason Is A Pin Dancing On The Head Of An Angel, So Small Is It In Comparison To The Divine Vastness That Encircles Us.

It Was Like Being In An Elevator Cut Loose At The Top. Falling, Falling, And Not Knowing When You Will Hit.

I Hope That People Will Finally Come To Realize That There Is Only One 'race' - The Human Race - And That We Are All Members Of It.

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.

An Eye For An Eye Only Leads To More Blindness.

God Is Not The Voice In The Whirlwind, God Is The Whirlwind.

Her Glass Wings Are Gone.

Even An Obvious Fabrication Is Some Comfort When You Have Few Others.

The Short Answer To 'why Do You Write' Is - I Suppose I Write For Some Of The Same Reasons I Read: To Live A Double Life; To Go Places I Haven't Been; To Examine Life On Earth; To Come To Know People In Ways, And At Depths, That Are Otherwise Impossible; To Be Surprised.

I Used To Think Of My Body As An Instrument, Of Pleasure, Or A Means Of Transportation, Or An Implement For The Accomplishment Of My Will.

It Used To Be That Your Bloodlines Dictated Who You Were. But The U.s. Became The Land Of The Self-made Man, In Which Not Only Did You Make A Fortune But You Could Make Up Everything Else About Yourself As Well. You Move Into A New Town With A Spurious Pedigreed Background And You Just Make Yourself Up.

Remember That, My Child. Remember You Are Half Water. If You Can't Go Through An Obstacle, Go Around It. Water Does.

The Beginning Of Canadian Cultural Nationalism Was Not 'am I Really That Oppressed?' But 'am I Really That Boring?'

Every Habit He's Ever Had Is Still There In His Body, Lying Dormant Like Flowers In The Desert. Given The Right Conditions, All His Old Addictions Would Burst Into Full And Luxuriant Bloom.

When I Was Sixteen, It Was Simple. Poetry Existed; Therefore It Could Be Written; And Nobody Had Told Me — Yet — The Many, Many Reasons Why It Could Not Be Written By Me.

The True Story Is Vicious And Multiple And Untrue After All. Why Do You Need It? Don’t Ever Ask For The True Story.

The Young Habitually Mistake Lust For Love, They're Infested With Idealism Of All Kinds.

Things Musicals Taught Me: All Your Problems Will Go Away If You Sing About It.

Americans Don't Usually Have To Think About Canadian-american Relations, Or, As They Would Put It, American-canadian Relations. Why Think About Something Which You Believe Affects You So Little? We, On The Other Hand, Have To Think About You Whether We Like It Or Not.

Support Your Libraries... Or Else!

In The Animal World Individuals Cheat, As Do We.

Another Belief Of Mine; That Everyone Else My Age Is An Adult, Whereas I Am Merely In Disguise.

My Brother And I Were Both Teenage Writers, And He Was, I Have To Say, Better Than I Was, But He Went Into Science, And I Went Into Writing.

You May Not Be Able To Alter Reality, But You Can Alter Your Attitude Towards It, And This, Paradoxically, Alters Reality. Try It And See.

You Can Pretty Much Trace When The Big Individual Indebtedness Kicked In, And It Was When The Credit Card Became Generally Available.

A Prison Does Not Only Lock Its Inmates Inside, It Keeps All Others Out. Her Strongest Prison Is Of Her Own Construction.

Some Travelers Think They Want To Go To Foreign Places But Are Dismayed When The Places Turn Out Actually To Be Foreign.

Some Bioengineering Is Good, Especially If It Results In Plants That Are More Drought-resistant Or Perennial Food Crops.

I Would Like To Believe This Is A Story I’m Telling. I Need To Believe It. I Must Believe It. Those Who Can Believe That Such Stories Are Only Stories Have A Better Chance. If It’s A Story I’m Telling, Then I Have Control Over The Ending. Then There Will Be An Ending, To The Story, And Real Life Will Come After It. I Can Pick Up Where I Left Off.

All Stories Are About Wolves. All Worth Repeating, That Is. Anything Else Is Sentimental Drivel.

In The Early Fight For Women's Rights, The Point Was Not That Women Were Morally Superior Or Better. The Conversation Was About The Difference Between Men And Women - Power, Privilege, Voting Rights, Etc. Unfortunately, It Quickly Moved To The "women Are Better" Argument. If This Were True In Life Or In Fiction, We Wouldn't Have Any Dark Or Deep Characters. We Wouldn't Have Any Salomes, Carmens, Ophelias. We Wouldn't Have Any Jealousy Or Passion.

That Was When They Suspended The Constitution. They Said It Would Be Temporary. There Wasn't Even Any Rioting In The Streets. People Stayed Home At Night, Watching Television, Looking For Some Direction. There Wasn't Even An Enemy You Could Put Your Finger On.

We Have To Rethink Our Whole Energy Approach, Which Is Hard To Do Because We're So Dependent On Oil, Not Just For Fuel But Also Plastic. If Plastic Vanished, There Would Be Total Chaos. We Have To Think Quite Carefully About Using Oil, And Its Derivatives, Because It's Not Going To Be Around Forever.

Perhaps Its Not The World That Is Soundless But We Who Are Deaf.

When I Was 16 I Started Publishing All Kinds Of Things In School Magazines. My Main Feedback Came From My English Teacher, Miss Bessie B. Billings, Who Said, 'i Can't Understand This At All, Dear, So It Must Be Good.

If He Wants To Be An Asshole, It's A Free Country. Millions Before Him Have Made The Same Life Choice.

For The Children With Their Greedy Little Mouths Represent The Future, Which Like Time Itself Will Devour All Now Alive.

Moira Was Like An Elevator With Open Sides. She Made Us Dizzy.

What You Get Is No Longer What You See.

Romance Takes Place In The Middle Distance. Romance Is Looking In At Yourself Through A Window Clouded With Dew. Romance Means Leaving Things Out: Where Life Grunts And Shuffles, Romance Only Sighs.

Ten Days After The War Ended, My Sister Laura Drove A Car Off A Bridge.

The Astrologers Would Tell That The U.s. Is Ruled By Fire And Canada Is Ruled By Water. Short Version: You Pep Us Up, We Cool You Down.

Writers Are Much Better Behaved Nowadays, For A Couple Of Reasons. Once Upon A Time Nobody Was Thinking Of A Career, Unless You Lived In New York, So There Wasn't As Much Pressure To Present A Respectable Exterior. And Secondly, There Was No Social Media. So If You Were Found Face Down On The Floor - People Did Do That Quite A Bit; Usually Men, But Not Always - Or Fell Through Plate Glass Windows Or Got Into Scrapes, It Became A Rumor, And Rumors Are Hard To Pin Down.

But Some People Can't Tell Where It Hurts. They Can't Calm Down. They Can't Ever Stop Howling.

Maybe I Don't Really Want To Know What's Going On. Maybe I'd Rather Not Know. Maybe I Couldn't Bear To Know. The Fall Was A Fall From Innocence To Knowledge.

If We Read Books All The Time We Would Be Very Unhealthy, As We Would Not Get Any Fresh Air, Exercise, Or Contact With Nature. Also We Would Not Spend Time With Other People. There Are A Lot Of Plusses To Reading - It's An Interactive Brain Workout - But Like Everything Else That's Beneficial In Moderation, Overdoses Can Be Dangerous.

I'm Not Sure I Really Am A Humanist. I Describe Myself As A Rigorous Agnostic, Which Means That You Cannot Declare As A Matter Of Material Truth Something That Is In Fact A Matter Of Spiritual Belief.

Everybody Acts As If They Have Free Will. They Act As If They Can Make These Decisions; Do They Know They Don't? I Think There's Been Some Back-down On The Idea That Everything Is Determined.

Some Days I Do Appreciate Things More, Eggs, Flowers, But Then I Decide I'm Only Having An Attack Of Sentimentality, My Brain Going Pastel Technicolor, Like A Beautiful-sunset Greeting Cards They Used To Make So Many Of In California. High-gloss Hearts. The Danger Is Grayout.

We Thought We Had Such Problems. How Were We To Know We Were Happy?

This Above All, To Refuse To Be A Victim.

Writers And Books Are Cheap Dates, Especially When You Compare The Cost Of A Book With A Ticket To The Opera - Or An Nhl Game.

I Felt White, Drained Of Blood, Cared For, Purified. Peaceful.

There Are Some Women Who Seem To Be Born Without Fear, Just As There Are People Who Are Born Without The Ability To Feel Pain. The Painless Ones Go Around Putting Their Hands On Hot Stoves, Freezing Their Feet To The Point Of Gangrene, Scalding The Lining Of Their Throats With Boiling Coffee, Because There Is No Warning Anguish. Evolution Does Not Favour Them. So Too Perhaps With The Fearless Women, Because There Aren't Very Many Of Them Around. ... Providence Appears To Protect Such Women, Maybe Out Of Astonishment.

I Never Say I'm An "ist" Of Any Kind Unless I Know How The Other Person Is Defining It.

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.

Some Of Our Earliest Writing, In Cuneiform, Was About Who Owes What.

I'm With The Spirit Of Earth-day-yet-to-come. Nobody Can Really Predict The Future, All You Can Do Is Look At Trends, And That Could Change At Any Moment.

I Was Delighted With The Film [payback: Debt And The Shadow Side Of Wealth]; It Almost Made Me Want To Be A Film-maker!

To Want Is To Have A Weakness.

Tell What Is Yours To Tell. Let Others Tell What Is Theirs.

We're Facing Growing Climate Change, More Floods, More Droughts, More Crisis On A Planetary Level, And The Systems We Put In Place In The Twentieth Century Are Just Not Going To Work. We've Run Out Of Stuff. Our Big Problems Are Going To Be Energy Supplies And Food Supplies. This Is Not A Right-left Issue.

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.

We Still Think Of A Powerful Man As A Born Leader And A Powerful Woman As An Anomaly.

I’m Not Sure Which Is Worse: Intense Feeling, Or The Absence Of It.

All Writers Must Go From Now To Once A Upon A Time; All Must Go From Here To There; All Must Descend To Where The Stories Are Kept; All Must Take Care Not To Be Captured And Held Immobile By The Past.

There Were A Lot Of Gods. Gods Always Come In Handy, They Justify Almost Anything.

Imagine A Famine. Now Imagine A Piece Of Bread. Both Of These Things Are Real But You Happen To Be In The Same Room With Only One Of Them. Put Yourself Into A Different Room, That’s What The Mind Is For.

Despite Their Cool Poses They Wear Their Cravings On The Outside, Like The Suckers On A Squid. They Want It All.

Canadians Are Fond Of A Good Disaster, Especially If It Has Ice, Water, Or Snow In It. You Thought The National Flag Was About A Leaf, Didn't You? Look Harder. It's Where Someone Got Axed In The Snow.

Maybe Sadness Was A Kind Of Hunger, She Thought. Maybe The Two Went Together.

I Wish This Story Were Different. I Wish It Were More Civilized. I Wish It Showed Me In A Better Light, If Not Happier, Than At Least More Active, Less Hesitant, Less Distracted By Trivia. I Wish It Had More Shape. I Wish T Were About Love, Or About Sudden Realizations Important To One’s Life, Or Even About Sunsets, Birds, Rainstorms, Or Snow. I’m Sorry There Is So Much Pain In This Story. I’m Sorry It’s In Fragments, Like A Body Caught In Crossfire Or Pulled Apart By Force. But There Is Nothing I Can Do To Change It.

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.

But I Keep Going On With This Sad And Hungry And Sordid, This Limping And Mutilated Story, Because After All I Want You To Hear It, As I Will Hear Yours Too If I Ever Get The Chance, If I Meet You Or If You Escape, In The Future Or In Heaven Or In Prison Or Underground, Some Other Place. What They Have In Common Is That They're Not Here. By Telling You Anything At All I'm At Least Believing In You, I Believe You're There, I Believe You Into Being. Because I'm Telling You This Story I Will Your Existence. I Tell, Therefore You Are.

...and Nostalgia Swept Through Jimmy Like A Sudden Hunger.

We Shouldn't Have Been So Scornful; We Should Have Had Compassion. But Compassion Takes Work, And We Were Young.

People Cry At Weddings For The Same Reason They Cry At Happy Endings: Because They So Desperately Want To Believe In Something They Know Is Not Credible.

That Is What You Have To Do Before You Kill, I Thought. You Have To Create An It, Where None Was Before.

Canadians And Americans May Look Alike, But The Contents Of Their Heads Are Quite Different. Americans Experience Themselves, Individually, As Small Toads In The Biggest And Most Powerful Puddle In The World. Their Sense Of Power Comes From Identifying With The Puddle. Canadians As Individuals May Have More Power Within The Puddle, Since There Are Fewer Toads In It; It's The Puddle That's Seen As Powerless.

What A Lost Person Needs Is A Map Of The Territory, With His Own Position Marked On It So He Can See Where He Is In Relation To Everything Else.

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?

There's An Epigram Tacked To My Office Bulletin Board, Pinched From A Magazine -- "wanting To Meet An Author Because You Like His Work Is Like Wanting To Meet A Duck Because You Like Pâté.

You Say, The Sensed Absence Of God And The Sensed Presence Amount To Much The Same Thing, Only In Reverse.

Reading Is One Of The Most Individual Things That Happens. So Every Reader Is Going To Read A Piece In A Slightly Different Way, Sometimes A Radically Different Way.

Anybody Who Writes A Book Is An Optimist. First Of All, They Think They're Going To Finish It. Second, They Think Somebody's Going To Publish It. Third, They Think Somebody's Going To Read It. Fourth, They Think Somebody's Going To Like It. How Optimistic Is That?

God Gave Unto The Animals A Wisdom Past Our Power To See: Each Knows Innately How To Live, Which We Must Learn Laboriously.

As With All Knowledge, Once You Knew It, You Couldn't Imagine How It Was That You Hadn't Known It Before.

If All Fossil Fuel Were To Go Poof! Tomorrow, The Result Would Be A Cataclysmic Social Upheaval, With Food Riots, Warlords, Shutdowns, Breakdown Of Social Order, Water Shortages, And Outbreaks Of Bloodshed And Disease.

Now That I Am Dead, I Know Everything.

Time Is Not A Line But A Dimension, Like The Dimensions Of Space.

You Can't Keep A Cool Head When You're Drowning In Love. You Just Trash Around A Lot And Scream, And Wear Yourself Out.

By Now You Know: I Come From Another Planet. But I Will Never Say To You, "take Me To Your Leaders." Even I--unused To Your Ways Though I Am--would Never Make That Mistake. We Ourselves Have Such Beings Among Us, Made Of Cogs, Pieces Of Paper, Small Disks Of Shiny Metal, Scraps Of Coloured Cloth. I Do Not Need To Encounter More Of Them. 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.

You Aren't Sick & Unhappy Only Alive & Stuck With It.

Though As He'd Say, What Is 'belief' But A Willingness To Suspend The Negatives?

To Take That Risk, To Offer Life And Remain Alive, Open Yourself Like This And Become Whole.

The Truly Fearless Think Of Themselves As Normal.

It Is My Contention That The Process Of Reading Is Part Of The Process Of Writing, The Necessary Completion Without Which Writing Can Hardly Be Said To Exist.

When They're Gone Out Of His Head, These Words, They'll Be Gone, Everywhere, Forever. As If They Had Never Been.

The Fabric Of Democracy Is Always Fragile Everywhere Because It Depends On The Will Of Citizens To Protect It, And When They Become Scared, When It Becomes Dangerous For Them To Defend It, It Can Go Very Quickly.

Knowing Was A Temptation. What You Don't Know Won't Tempt You.

Writing Of The Narrative Kind, And Perhaps All Writing, Is Motivated Deep Down, By A Fear Or And Fascination With Mortality - By A Desire To Make The Risky Trip To The Underworld And To Bring Something Or Someone Back From The Dead.

The Scroll Is Coming Back (twitter Is A Scroll.)

What Am I Living For And What Am I Dying For Are The Same Question.

Without The Light, No Chance; Without The Dark, No Dance.

For Every Age There Is A Popular Idea About What Madness Is, What Causes It, And How A Mad Person Should Look And Behave; And It's Usually These Popular Ideas, Rather Than Those Of Medical Professionals, That Turn Up In Songs And Stories And Plays And Books.

And Yes, I Know It's You; And That Is What We Will Come To, Sooner Or Later, When It's Even Darker Than It Is Now, When The Snow Is Colder, When It's Darkest And Coldest And Candles Are No Longer Any Use To Us And The Visibility Is Zero: Yes. It's Still You. It's Still You.

He Has To Find More And Better Ways Of Occupying His Time. His Time, What A Bankrupt Idea, As If He's Been Given A Box Of Time Belonging To Him Alone, Stuffed To The Brim With Hours And Minutes That He Can Spend Like Money. Trouble Is, The Box Has Holes In It And The Time Is Running Out, No Matter What He Does With It.

Screw Poetry, It’s You I Want, Your Taste, Rain On You, Mouth On Your Skin.

Why Is It He Feels Some Line Has Been Crossed, Some Boundary Transgressed? How Much Is Too Much, How Far Is Too Far?

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.

Short Forms Are Returning Online. Interactivity Is Coming Back; It Was Always There In Oral Storytelling.

I Tell, Therefore You Are.

Men Are Afraid That Women Will Laugh At Them. Women Are Afraid That Men Will Kill Them.

I Sink Down Into My Body As Into A Swamp, Fenland, Where Only I Know The Footing…. I’m A Cloud, Congealed Around A Central Object, The Shape Of A Pear, Which Is Hard And More Real Than I Am And Glows Red Within Its Translucent Wrapping. Inside It Is A Space, Huge As The Sky At Night And Dark And Curved Like That, Though Black-red Rather Than Black.

For An Instant She Felt Them, Their Identities, Almost Their Substance, Pass Over Her Head Like A Wave. At Some Time She Would Be — Or No, Already She Was Like That Too; She Was One Of Them, Her Body The Same, Identical, Merged With That Other Flesh That Choked The Air In The Flowered Room With Its Sweet Organic Scent; She Felt Suffocated By This Thick Sargasso-sea Of Femininity.

If It's A Story I'm Telling, Then I Have Control Over The Ending... But If It's A Story, Even In My Head, I Must Be Telling It To Someone. You Don't Tell A Story Only To Yourself. There's Always Someone Else. Even When There Is No One.

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.

Canada Was Built On Dead Beavers.

Marshall Mcluhan Is Absolutely Right, We Are Always Looking In The Rear View Mirror.

Laughter May Instruct But It May Also Conceal, Defending The Joker Against Anger And Retaliation: A Game Is Only A Game.

A Fist Is More Than The Sum Of Its Fingers.

Mathematical Logic

You Need A Certain Amount Of Nerve To Be A Writer.

Why Does The Mind Do Such Things? Turn On Us, Rend Us, Dig The Claws In. If You Get Hungry Enough, They Say, You Start Eating Your Own Heart. Maybe It's Much The Same.

Inside The Peach, There Is A Stone.

Even In The Tragedies, Shakespeare Always Put In Parts For The Comic Actors Because His Audience Was Mixed. He Puts In People Who Talk Like Aristocrats. He Puts In Idiots And Fools. He Puts In Certain Middle-range Characters. And When You Go To The Globe, You Realize How That All Works. The People Who Paid More Sat In Seats Around The Edge. Everybody Else Paid A Penny. They Put It Into A Tin Box - That's Why We Call It The "box Office." They Stood In The Pit, But They Were Very Close, So When Hamlet Was Doing His Soliloquy, It Was Addressed To You, The Audience - Right There.

Science Is Not Something That Exists Apart From Human Beings. It's One Of The Things We Do As Human Beings, And We Always Have Done Science And Technology In Some Form.

Blank Pages Inspire Me With Terror.

For Me The Novel Is A Social Vehicle, It Reflects Society.

I'm Working On My Own Life Story. I Don't Mean I'm Putting It Together; No, I'm Taking It Apart. If You'd Wanted The Narrative Line You Should Have Asked Earlier, When I Still Knew Everything And Was More Than Willing To Tell. That Was Before I Discovered The Virtues Of Scissors, The Virtues Of Matches.

The Cat Jumps Up On The Bed And Tries To Get Onto My Head. It's His Way Of Telling Whether Or Not I'm Dead. If I'm Not, He Wants To Be Scratched; If I Am - He'll Think Of Something

Debt Is Part Of The Human Condition. Civilization Is Based On Exchanges - On Gifts, Trades, Loans - And The Revenges And Insults That Come When They Are Not Paid Back.

I Wish You Good Writing And Good Luck. Even If You've Already Done The Good Writing, You'll Still Need The Good Luck. It's A Shark-filled Lagoon Out There. Cross Your Fingers And Watch Your Back.

More Powerful Than God, More Evil Than The Devil; The Poor Have It, The Rich Lack It, And If You Eat It You Die?

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.

I'm Interested In The Gothic Novel Because It's Very Much A Woman's Form. Why Is There Such A Wide Readership For Books That Essentially Say, 'your Husband Is Trying To Kill You'?

Faith Is Only A Word, Embroidered.

You Most Likely Need A Thesaurus, A Rudimentary Grammar Book, And A Grip On Reality. This Latter Means: There's No Free Lunch. Writing Is Work. It's Also Gambling. You Don't Get A Pension Plan. Other People Can Help You A Bit, But essentially You're On Your Own. Nobody Is Making You Do This: You Chose It, So Don't Whine.

Gardening Is Not A Rational Act. What Matters Is The Immersion Of The Hands In The Earth, That Ancient Ceremony Of Which The Pope Kissingthe Tarmac Is Merely A Pallid Vestigial Remnant.

I Grew Up With The Biologists. I Know How They Think.

Nothing Changes Instantaneously: In A Gradually Heating Bathtub You'd Be Boiled To Death Before You Knew It.

A Suicide Is Both A Rebuke To The Living And A Puzzle That Defies Them To Solve It. Like A Poem, Suicide Is Finished And Refuses To Answer Questions As To Its Final Cause.

The Myth That Everyone Once Read Great Literature Is Just A Myth.

Great Literature

Once In A While, Jimmy Would Make Up A Word But He Never Once Got Caught Out. ... He Should Have Been Pleased By His Success With These Verbal Fabrications, But Instead He Was Depressed By It. The Memos Telling Him He'd Done A Good Job Meant Nothing To Him; All They Proved Was That No One Was Capable Of Appreciating How Clever He Had Been. He Came To Understand Why Serial Killers Sent Helpful Clues To The Police.

More Of Your Brain Is Involved When Reading Than It Is When You Watch Television... Because You Are Supplying Just About Everything... You're A Creator.

Walter Turned On The Radio: Electric Violins Wailing, Twisted Romance, The Four-square Beat Of Heartbreak. Trite Suffering, But Suffering Nonetheless. The Entertainment Business. What Voyeurs We Have All Become.

A Ratio Of Failures Is Built Into The Process Of Writing. The Wastebasket Has Evolved For A Reason.

As An Artist Your First Loyalty Is To Your Art. Unless This Is The Case, You're Going To Be A Second-rate Artist. I Don't Mean There's Never Any Overlap. You Learn Things In One Area And Bring Them Into Another Area. But Giving A Speech Against Racism Is Not The Same As Writing A Novel. The Object Is Very Clear In The Fight Against Racism; You Have Reasons Why You're Opposed To It. But When You're Writing A Novel, You Don't Want The Reader To Come Out Of It Voting Yes Or No To Some Question. Life Is More Complicated Than That. Reality Simply Consists Of Different Points Of View.

I Enjoyed Teaching. I Liked The Students. Having To Formulate My Ideas About Literature Made Them Clearer. I Did Not Particularly Enjoy The More Bureaucratic Aspects Of The Job. However, If You Are Teaching Fervently, Your Energy And Time Are Used Up At A Great Rate.

I'm Working On My Own Life Story. I Don't Mean I'm Putting It Together; No, I'm Taking It Apart.

And Consider: It Is Loss To Which Everything Flows, Absence In Which Everything Flowers

Better Not To Invent Her In Her Absence. Better To Wait Until She's Actually Here. Then He Can Make Her Up As She Goes Along.

...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.

Toast Is Me. I Am Toast.

It Was Exciting To Work With Director Jennifer Baichwal, Who Made Manufactured Landscapes And Others, On The Film Of Payback: Debt And The Shadow Side Of Wealth. It's Called, Simply, Payback. Jennifer Didn't Want To Do A Transliteration Of The Book, A Kind Of Illustrated Version, But To Go Into The Core Of The Book: Owing And Being Owed, Paying And Paying Back, On All Sorts Of Levels. So She Found Real-life, Visceral Stories That Embodied The Themes Of The Book.

Being Edited Is Like Falling Face Down Into A Threshing Machine.

There's Nothing Like Drawing A Thing To Make You Really See It.

I'm Not Senile," I Snapped. "if I Burn The House Down It Will Be On Purpose.

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.

And Each Of His Voices Left His Body In A Different Colored Soul And Floated Up Towards The Sun Still Singing.

The Only Way You Can Write The Truth Is To Assume That What You Set Down Will Never Be Read.

We'll Choose Knowledge No Matter What, We'll Maim Ourselves In The Process, We'll Stick Our Hands Into The Flames For It If Necessary. Curiosity Is Not Our Only Motive; Love Or Grief Or Despair Or Hatred Is What Drives Us On. We'll Spy Relentlessly On The Dead; We'll Open Their Letters, We'll Read Their Journals, We'll Go Through Their Trash, Hoping For A Hint, A Final Word, An Explanation, From Those Who Have Deserted Us--who've Left Us Holding The Bag, Which Is Often A Good Deal Emptier Than We'd Supposed.

My Good Intentions Are Completely Lethal.

Good Intentions

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.

The Goals Of The Feminist Movement Have Not Been Achieved, And Those Who Claim We're Living In A Post-feminist Era Are Either Sadly Mistaken Or Tired Of Thinking About The Whole Subject.

Potential Has A Shelf Life.

I've Never Bought Into Any Sort Of Hard And Fast, This-box/that-box Characterization. People Are Individuals. Yes, They May Be Expected To Be A Particular Way. But That Doesn't Mean They're Going To Be That Way.

What A Lost Person Needs Is A Map Of The Territory, With His Own Position Marked On It So He Can See Where He Is In Relation To Everything Else. Literature Is Not Only A Mirror; It Is Also A Map, A Geography Of The Mind. Our Literature Is One Such Map, If We Can Learn To Read It As Our Literature, As The Product Of Who And Where We Have Been. We Need Such A Map Desperately, We Need To Know About Here, Because Here Is Where We Live. For The Members Of A Country Or A Culture, Shared Knowledge Of Their Place, Their Here, Is Not A Luxury But A Necessity. Without That Knowledge We Will Not Survive.

A Home Filled With Nothing But Yourself. It's Heavy, That Lightness. It's Crushing, That Emptiness.

More And More I Feel Like A Letter—deposited Here, Collected There. But A Letter Addressed To No One.

A Lot Of Being A Poet Consists Of Willed Ignorance. If You Woke Up From Your Trance And Realized The Nature Of The Life-threatening And Dignity-destroying Precipice You Were Walking Along, You Would Switch Into Actuarial Sciences Immediately.

If I Love You, Is That A Fact Or A Weapon?

What Breaks In Daybreak? Is It The Night? Is It The Sun, Cracked In Two By The Horizon Like An Egg, Spilling Out Light?

Anything That Suffers And Dies Instead Of Us Is Christ; If They Didn't Kill Birds And Fish They Would Have Killed Us. The Animals Die That We May Live, They Are Substitute People, Hunters In The Fall Killing The Deer, That Is Christ Also. And We Eat Them, Out Of Cans Or Otherwise; We Are Eaters Of Death, Dead Christ-flesh Resurrecting Inside Us, Granting Us Life. Canned Spam, Canned Jesus, Even The Plants Must Be Christ.

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