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Communications Technology Changes Possibilities For Communication, But That Doesn't Mean It Changes The Inherited Structure Of The Brain. So You May Think That You're Addicted To Online Reading, But As Soon As It Isn't Available Anymore, Your Brain Will Pretty Immediately Adjust To Other Forms Of Reading. It's A Habit Like All Habits.

-Margaret Atwood

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Communications Technology Changes Possibilities

Margaret Atwood

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Communications Technology Changes Possibilities For Communication, But That Doesn't Mean It Changes The Inherited Structure Of The Brain. So You May Think That You're Addicted To Online Reading, But As Soon As It Isn't Available Anymore, Your Brain Will Pretty Immediately Adjust To Other Forms Of Reading. It's A Habit Like All Habits.

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I Don't Know Why They Are All So Eager To Be Remembered. What Good Will It Do Them? There Are Some Things That Should Be Forgotten By Everyone, And Never Spoken Of Again.

Anaesthesia, That's One Technique: If It Hurts, Invent A Different Pain.

This Above All, To Refuse To Be A Victim.

The World Is Being Run By People My Age, Men My Age, With Falling-out Hair And Health Worries, And It Frightens Me. When The Leaders Were Older Than Me I Could Believe In Their Wisdom, I Could Believe They Had Transcended Rage And Malice And The Need To Be Loved. Now I Know Better. I Look At The Faces In Newspapers, In Magazines, And Wonder: What Greeds, What Furies Drive Them On?

I Did Not Know How To Paint Or Even What To Paint, But I Knew I Had To Begin.

Love Is Giving, Marriage Is Buying And Selling. You Can't Put Love Into A Contract.

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.

She Knows The Rituals, She Knows How We're Supposed To Be Behaving...but I Think These Things Are Impenetrable And Fraudulent, And I Can't Do Them Without Feeling I'm Acting.

I Began To Forget Myself In The Middle Of Sentences.

The Temptation Is To Stay Inside; To Subside Into The Kind Of Recluse Whom Neighborhood Children Regard With Derision And Little Awe; To Let The Hedges And Weeds Grow Up, To Allow The Doors To Rust Shut, To Lie On My Bed In Some Gown-shaped Garment And Let My Hair Lengthens And Spread Out Over The Pillow And My Fingernails To Sprout Into Claws, While Candle Wax Drips Onto The Carpet. But Long Ago I Made A Choice Between Classicism And Romanticism. I Prefer To Be Upright And Contained—an Urn In Daylight.

Extinctathon, Monitored By Maddaddam. Adam Named The Living Animals, Maddaddam Names The Dead Ones. Do You Want To Play?

While In A Vintage Restaurant..."the Past Isn't Quaint While You're In It. Only At A Safe Distance, Later, When You See It As Decor, Not As The Shape Your Life's Been Squeezed Into.

The Moment Of Betrayal Is The Worst, The Moment When You Know Beyond Any Doubt That You've Been Betrayed: That Some Other Human Being Has Wished You That Much Evil

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 Slipped You'd Fall And Cut Yourself, But It Was No Use Blaming The Rocks.

To Want Is To Have A Weakness.

You Can Forget Who You Are If You're Alone Too Much.

Publishers Are In Business To Make Money, And If Your Books Do Well They Don't Care If You Are Male, Female, Or An Elephant.

The Animals Have No Need For Speech, Why Talk When You Are A Word.

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.

Younger People Have Greatest Fears. Why Is That? Because They Don't Know The Plot. They Don't Know Their Own Individual Plot... They Don't Know What's Going To Happen To Them.

The Truly Fearless Think Of Themselves As Normal.

But Most Hearts Say, I Want, I Want, I Want, I Want. My Heart Is More Duplicitous, Though No Twin As I Once Thought. It Says, I Want, I Don't Want, I Want, And Then A Pause. It Forces Me To Listen.

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.

Vampires Get The Joy Of Flying Around And Living Forever, Werewolves Get The Joy Of Animal Spirits. But Zombies, They're Not Rich, Or Aristocratic, They Shuffle Around. They're A Group Phenomenon, They're Not Very Fast, They're Quite Sickly. So What's The Pleasure Of Being One?

You Can Examine The Whole 19th Century From The Point Of View Of Who Would Have Maxed Out Their Credit Cards. Emma Bovary Would Have Maxed Hers Out. No Question. Mr. Scrooge Would Not Have. He Would Have Snipped His Up.

There's A Difference Between Describing And Evoking Something. You Can Describe Something And Be Quite Clinical About It. To Evoke It, You Call It Up In The Reader. That's What Writers Do When They're Good.

The Genesis Of A Poem For Me Is Usually A Cluster Of Words. The Only Good Metaphor I Can Think Of Is A Scientific One: Dipping A Thread Into A Supersaturated Solution To Induce Crystal Formation. I Don't Think I Solve Problems In My Poetry; I Think I Uncover The Problems.

But Maybe, Underneath, She Loves Him Too Much. Maybe It's Her Excessive Love That Pushes Him Away.

I Was Born In The Ottawa General Hospital Right After The Gray Cup Football Game In 1939. Six Months Later, I Was Backpacked Into The Quebec Bush. I Grew Up In And Out Of The Bush, In And Out Of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie And Toronto.

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.

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

Fear Has A Smell, As Love Does.

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 Battled In Secret, Undeclared, And After A While I No Longer Fought Back Because I Never Won. The Only Defense Was Flight, Invisibility.

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.

They Will Not Let You Have Peace, They Don't Want You To Have Anything They Don't Have Themselves.

Forgiving Men Is So Much Easier Than Forgiving Women.

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.

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

I Grew Up Amongst Biologists.

Social Media Is Called Social Media For A Reason. It Lends Itself To Sharing Rather Than Horn-tooting.

Reading And Writing, Like Everything Else, Improve With Practice. And, Of Course, If There Are No Young Readers And Writers, There Will Shortly Be No Older Ones. Literacy Will Be Dead, And Democracy - Which Many Believe Goes Hand In Hand With It - Will Be Dead As Well.

I'm A Red Tory. To Get A Fix On This Category, You Have To Go Back To The 19th Century. The Tories Were The Ones Who Believed That Those In Power Had A Responsibility To The Community, That Money Should Not Be The Measure Of All Things.

It's Impossible To Say A Thing Exactly The Way It Was, Because Of What You Say Can Never Be Exact, You Always Have To Leave Something Out, There Are Too Many Parts, Sides, Crosscurrents, Nuances; Too Many Gestures, Which Could Mean This Or That, Too Many Shapes Which Can Never Be Fully Described, Too Many Flavors, In The Air Or On The Tongue, Half-colors, Too Many.

Like Many Modern Poets, I Tend To Conceal Rhymes By Placing Them In The Middle Of Lines, And To Avoid Immediate Alliteration And Assonance In Favor Of Echoes Placed Later In The Poems.

Yelling Is A Form Of Publishing

Winning Intoxicates You, And Numbs You To The Sufferings Of Others.

Suffering Of Others

We All Know That A Book Is Not Really A Person. It Isn’t A Human Being. But If You Are A Lover Of Books As Books – As Objects, That Is – And Ignore The Human Element In Them – That Is, Their Voices – You Will Be Committing An Error Of The Soul, Because You Will Be An Idolator, Or Else A Fetishist.

Lose Your Temper And You Lose The Fight.

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 Have Always Known That There Were Spellbinding Evil Parts For Women. For One Thing, I Was Taken At An Early Age To See Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. Never Mind The Protestant Work Ethic Of The Dwarfs. Never Mind The Tedious Housework-is-virtuous Motif. Never Mind The Fact That Snow White Is A Vampire -- Anyone Who Lies In A Glass Coffin Without Decaying And Then Comes To Life Again Must Be. The Truth Is That I Was Paralysed By The Scene In Which The Evil Queen Drinks The Magic Potion And Changes Her Shape. What Power, What Untold Possibilities!

Men And Women Are Not "equal" If "equal" Means "exactly The Same." Our Many Puzzlements And Indeed Unhappinesses Come From Trying To Figure Out What The Differences Really Mean, Or Should Mean, Or Should Not Mean.

I Have A Big Following Among The Biogeeks Of This World. Nobody Ever Puts Them In Books.

How Could I Be Sleeping With This Particular Man.... Surely Only True Love Could Justify My Lack Of Taste.

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

The Use Of "religion" As An Excuse To Repress The Freedom Of Expression And To Deny Human Rights Is Not Confined To Any Country Or Time.

The Reader Cannot See Into Your Heart. He Will Know Only What You Tell Him. Make The Blind See Your Words. Make The Hard-hearted Feel. Make The Deaf Hear.

There Is Never Only One, Of Anyone

We Slept In What Had Once Been The Gymnasium.

He Has Been Trying To Sing Love Into Existence Again And He Has Failed

I Think Of Bad News As A Huge Bird, With The Wings Of A Crow And The Face Of My Grade Four School Teacher, Sparse Bun, Rancid Teeth, Wrinkly Frown, Pursed Mouth And All, Sailing Around The World Under Cover Of Darkness Pleased To Be The Bearer Of Ill Tidings, Carrying A Basket Of Rotten Eggs, And Knowing- As The Sun Comes Up- Exactly Where To Drop Them. On Me, For One.

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

I Would Like To Be The Air That Inhabits You For A Moment Only. I Would Like To Be That Unnoticed And That Necessary.

Hatred Would Have Been Easier. With Hatred, I Would Have Known What To Do. Hatred Is Clear, Metallic, One-handed, Unwavering; Unlike Love.

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.

Repeat Reading For Me Shares A Few Things With Hot-water Bottles And Thumbsucking: Comfort, Familiarity, The Recurrence Of The Expected.

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

Our Heaven Is Their Hell, Said God. I Like A Balanced Universe.

But Who Can Remember Pain, Once It’s Over? All That Remains Of It Is A Shadow, Not In The Mind Even, In The Flesh. Pain Marks You, But Too Deep To See. Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind.

I Grew Up In The North Woods Of Canada. You Had To Know Certain Things About Survival. Wilderness Survival Courses Weren't Very Formalized When I Was Growing Up, But I Was Taught Certain Things About What To Do If I Got Lost In The Woods.

I Didn't Much Like It, This Grudge-holding Against The Past.

'1984' Is Not A Wonder Tale. Not Only Could It Happen, But It Has Happened, But Under Different Names.

He Was Deciding Whether To Cut Her Throat Or Love Her Forever.

We Are A Society Dying, Said Aunt Lydia, Of Too Much Choice.

Farewells Can Be Shattering, But Returns Are Surely Worse. Solid Flesh Can Never Live Up To The Bright Shadow Cast By Its Absence.

I Think The Book You Always Like Best Is The One You're About To Write.

By Telling You Anything At All I'm At Least Believing In You, 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. So I Will Go On. So I Will Myself To Go On.

Some Cleric Putting A Match To Her. /neither Of Them Looks Happy About It. /once Lit, She'll Burn Like A Book, /like A Book That Was Ever Finished, /like A Locked-up Library.

Which Of Us Can Resist The Temptation Of Being Thought Indispensable?

The Answers You Get From Literature Depend On The Questions You Pose.

I'm A Strict, Strict Agnostic. It's Very Different From A Casual, 'i Don't Know.' It's That You Cannot Present As Knowledge Something That Is Not Knowledge. You Can Present It As Faith, You Can Present It As Belief, But You Can't Present It As Fact.

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.

In Shakespeare Saved My Life, [author Laura Bates] Said She Got Better Papers From [prisoners] Than She Got From People In Her Regular Classes. Because She Was Teaching, Of Course, Macbeth, And A Number Of Them Had Murdered People. The Guy Who Wrote The Best Paper Said, "you Do Have This, 'is This A Dagger Which I See Before Me?' Before You Do It, But In My Case It Was A Gun."

A Hot Wind Was Blowing Around My Head, The Strands Of My Hair Lifting And Swirling In It, Like Ink Spilled In Water.

You're Sad Because You're Sad. It's Psychic. It's The Age. It's Chemical. Go See A Shrink Or Take A Pill, Or Hug Your Sadness Like An Eyeless Doll You Need To Sleep. Well, All Children Are Sad But Some Get Over It. Count Your Blessings. Better Than That, Buy A Hat. Buy A Coat Or A Pet. Take Up Dancing To Forget.

Now That I Am Dead, I Know Everything.

An Eye For An Eye Only Leads To More Blindness.

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.

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. Maybe None Of This Is About Control. Maybe It Isn't Really About Who Can Own Whom, Who Can Do What To Whom And Get Away With It, Even As Far As Death. Maybe It Isn't About Who Can Sit And Who Has To Kneel Or Stand Or Lie Down, Legs Spread Open. Maybe It's About Who Can Do What To Whom And Be Forgiven For It. Never Tell Me It Amounts To The Same Thing.

I Was Sand, I Was Snow—written On, Rewritten, Smoothed Over.

I'll Make You Mine, Lovers Said In Old Books. They Never Said, I'll Make You Me.

Time Rises And Rises, And When It Reaches The Level Of Your Eyes You Drown.

I Believe In The Resistance As I Believe There Can Be No Light Without Shadow; Or Rather, No Shadow Unless There Is Also Light.

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.

You're Dead, Cordelia.' No I'm Not. 'yes You Are. You're Dead. Lie Down.

The Desire To Be Loved Is The Last Illusion. Give It Up And You Will Be Free.

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

You Think I'm Not A Goddess? Try Me. This Is A Torch Song. Touch Me And You'll Burn.

It's True That There Is A Rescue Thing In People, And Not Just Rescuing The Family, Which Is Kind Of Obvious From A Biological Point Of View. But Why Is It That Some People Will Jump Into A Freezing River And Swim Out To A Downed Plane For Total Strangers? What Is That About? And It Seems To Be That It's Part Of Your Concept Of Who You Are. That's Why Some People Run Into The Burning Buildings, Because If They Don't, Their Concept Of Who They Are Will Be Violated. They Wouldn't Be Who They Thought They Were.

The Story As Told In The Odyssey Doesn't Hold Water. There Are Too Many Inconsistencies.

I Want Everything Back, The Way It Was. But There Is No Point To It, This Wanting.

When I Was 16, I Started Publishing All Kinds Of Things In School Magazines.

Nature Is To Zoos As God Is To Churches.

You Think You Have The Amount Of Money That Is Your Credit Limit. We're Just Wired To Think That, You Know? Until The Bill Arrives - A Sobering Moment - You Think You're Richer Than You Are.

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.

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.

My Father Was A Forest Entomologist, Which Means He Was Aware That Spraying Forests For Spruce Budworm Was Counterproductive In That It Didn't Really Work, And It Killed Everything Else In The Forests, And It Wasn't Good For The People Who Were Exposed To It, Either. So He Was An Early Proponent Of Not Doing That, But, Of Course, Nobody Listened.

It's Rather Useless To Write A Gripping Narrative With Nothing In It But Climate Change Because Novels Are Always About People Even If They Purport To Be About Rabbits Or Robots.

When Any Civilization Is Dust And Ashes," He Said, "art Is All That's Left Over. Images, Words, Music. Imaginative Structures. Meaning—human Meaning, That Is—is Defined By Them. You Have To Admit That.

If Your Not Annoying Somebody, You're Not Alive.

The Thing About Delirium Is You Think It's Great, But It Actually Isn't.

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.

Does Feminist Mean Large Unpleasant Person Who'll Shout At You Or Someone Who Believes Women Are Human Beings. To Me It's The Latter, So I Sign Up

They Are Hypocrites, They Think The Church Is A Cage To Keep God In, So He Will Stay Locked Up There And Not Go Wandering About The Earth During The Week, Poking His Nose Into Their Business, And Looking In The Depths And Darkness And Doubleness Of Their Hearts, And Their Lack Of True Charity; And They Believed They Need Only Be Bothered About Him On Sundays When They Have Their Best Clothes On And Their Faces Straight, And Their Hands Washed And Their Gloves On, And Their Stories All Prepared.

It's A Critical Fallacy Of Our Times ... That A Writer Should 'grow,' 'change,' Or 'develop.' This Fallacy Causes Us To Expect From Children Or Radishes: 'grow,' Or There's Something Wrong With You. But Writers Are Not Radishes. If You Look At What Most Writers Actually Do, It Resembles A Theme With Variations More Than It Does The Popular Notion Of Growth.

If I Were Going To Convert To Any Religion I Would Probably Choose Catholicism Because It At Least Has Female Saints And The Virgin Mary.

I Marvel Again At The Nakedness Of Men's Lives: The Showers Right Out In The Open, The Body Exposed For Inspection And Comparison, The Public Display Of Privates. What Is It For? What Purposes Of Reassurance Does It Serve? The Flashing Of A Badge, Look, Everyone, All Is In Order, I Belong Here. Why Don't Women Have To Prove To One Another That They Are Women? Some Form Of Unbuttoning, Some Split-crotch Routine, Just As Casual. A Doglike Sniffing.

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.

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

The Heart With Letters On It Shining Like A Light Bulb Through The Trim Hole Painted In The Chest, Art History.

If You Want What's In The Package You Should At Least Know How To Get The String Off, Is What I Say.

I Particularly Like Twitter, Because It's Short And Can Be Very Funny And Informative. It's A Little Bit Like Having Your Own Radio Program.

If A Stranger Taps You On The Ass And Says, "how's The Little Lady Today!" You Will Probably Cringe. But If He's An American, He's Only Being Friendly.

The Internet Is 95 Percent Porn And Spam

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

Optimism Means Better Than Reality; Pessimism Means Worse Than Reality. I'm A Realist.

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.

Heroes Need Monsters To Establish Their Heroic Credentials. You Need Something Scary To Overcome.

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

Perhaps I Write For No One. Perhaps For The Same Person Children Are Writing For When They Scrawl Their Names In The Snow.

Extreme Good, Extreme Evil: The Abilities Required Are Similar.

She Had No Images Of This Love. She Could Offer No Anecdotes. It Was A Belief Rather Than A Memory.

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

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.

Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down. I Repeat This To Myself But It Conveys Nothing. You Might As Well Say, Don't Let There Be Air; Or Don't Be. I Suppose You Could Say That.

Old Lovers Go The Way Of Old Photographs, Bleaching Out Gradually As In A Slow Bath Of Acid: First The Moles And Pimples, Then The Shadings. Then The Faces Themselves, Until Nothing Remains But The General Outlines.

Reading ... Changes You. You Aren't The Same Person After You've Read A Particular Book As You Were Before, And You Will Read The Next Book, Unless Both Are Harlequin Romances, In A Slightly Different Way.

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

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!

Ignoring Isn’t The Same As Ignorance, You Have To Work At It.

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

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.

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

She Imagines Him Imagining Her. This Is Her Salvation. In Spirit She Walks The City, Traces Its Labyrinths, Its Dingy Mazes: Each Assignation, Each Rendezvous, Each Door And Stair And Bed. What He Said, What She Said, What They Did, What They Did Then. Even The Times They Argued, Fought, Parted, Agonized, Rejoined. How They’d Loved To Cut Themselves On Each Other, Taste Their Own Blood. We Were Ruinous Together, She Thinks. But How Else Can We Live, These Days, Except In The Midst Of Ruin?

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.

I Don't Find The Idea Of Sewing Degrading. A Thing Is Degrading When You Are Forced To Do It, Through Economic Reasons Or Through Slavery Or Some Other Form Of Compulsion.

When They Came To Harvest My Corpse (open Your Mouth, Close Your Eyes) Cut My Body From The Rope, Surprise, Surprise: I Was Still Alive. Tough Luck, Folks, I Know The Law: You Can't Execute Me Twice For The Same Thing. How Nice. I Fell To The Clover, Breathed It In, And Bared My Teeth At Them In A Filthy Grin. You Can Imagine How That Went Over. Now I Only Need To Look Out At Them Through My Sky-blue Eyes. They See Their Own Ill Will Staring Then In The Forehead And Turn Tail Before, I Was Not A Witch. But Now I Am One.

Happy As A Clam, Is What My Mother Says For Happy. I Am Happy As A Clam: Hard-shelled, Firmly Closed.

Nature Is An Expert In Cost-benefit Analysis,' She Says. 'although She Does Her Accounting A Little Differently. As For Debts, She Always Collects In The Long Run.

Cost Benefit Analysis

I Am Not Running For Mayor Yet. But If It Comes To Be True That People Cannot Voice An Opinion Unless They Have Been Elected, Then We Are No Longer In A Democracy.

What Fabrications They Are, Mothers. Scarecrows, Wax Dolls For Us To Stick Pins Into, Crude Diagrams. We Deny Them An Existence Of Their Own, We Make Them Up To Suit Ourselves -- Our Own Hungers, Our Own Wishes, Our Own Deficiencies.

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.

My Family Was Big On Sharing. I Guess It Was Just The Way I Was Brought Up. Or Maybe, I Read Those Fairy Tales In Which One Good Turn Elicits Another. But In Writing, Yes, Some Older Writers Were Kind To Me When I Was Young; Although Some Others Were Not.

Walking Was Not Fast Enough, So We Ran. Running Was Not Fast Enough, So We Galloped. Galloping Was Not Fast Enough, So We Sailed. Sailing Was Not Fast Enough, So We Rolled Merrily Along On Long Metal Tracks. Long Metal Tracks Were Not Fast Enough, So We Drove. Driving Was Not Fast Enough, So We Flew. Flying Isn't Fast Enough For Us. 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.

As Charles Darwin Said,'the Economy Shown By Nature In Her Resources Is Striking,'' Says The Spirit. 'all Wealth Comes From Nature. Without It, There Wouldn't Be Any Economics. The Primary Wealth Is Food, Not Money. Therefore Anything That Concerns The Handling Of The Land Also Concerns Me.

Well. Then We Had The Irises, Rising Beautiful And Cool On Their Tall Stalks, Like Blown Glass, Like Pastel Water Momentarily Frozen In A Splash, Light Blue, Light Mauve, And The Darker Ones, Velvet And Purple, Black Cat's Ears In The Sun, Indigo Shadow, And The Bleeding Hearts, So Female In Shape It Was A Surprise They'd Not Long Since Been Rooted Out. There Is Something Subversive About This Garden Of Serena's, A Sense Of Buried Things Bursting Upwards, Wordlessly, Into The Light, As If To Point, To Say: Whatever Is Silenced Will Clamor To Be Heard, Though Silently.

If You're Put On A Pedestal, You're Supposed To Behave Yourself Like A Pedestal Type Of Person. Pedestals Actually Have A Limited Circumference. Not Much Room To Move Around.

Menopause. A Pause While You Reconsider Men.

I Got Into Trouble A While Ago For Saying That I Thought The Internet Led To Increased Literacy - People Scolded Me About The Shocking Grammar To Be Found Online - But I Was Talking About Fundamentals: Quite Simply, You Can't Use The Net Unless You Can Read.

How Easy It Is To Invent A Humanity, For Anyone At All.

Nature Full Strength Is More Than We Can Take, Adam One Used To Say. It's A Potent Hallucinogen, A Soporific, For The Untrained Soul. We're No Longer At Home In It. We Need To Dilute It. We Can't Drink It Straight. And God Is The Same. Too Much God And You Overdose. God Needs To Be Filtered.

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

When I Am Writing Fiction, I Believe I Am Much Better Organized, More Methodical - One Has To Be When Writing A Novel. Writing Poetry Is A State Of Free Float.

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.

I Define Science Fiction As Fiction In Which Things Happen That Are Not Possible Today - That Depend, For Instance, On Advanced Space Travel, Time Travel, The Discovery Of Green Monsters On Other Planets Or Galaxies, Or That Contain Various Technologies We Have Not Yet Developed.

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

Time Is Not A Line But A Dimension, Like The Dimensions Of Space. If You Can Bend Space You Can Bend Time Also, And If You Knew Enough And Could Move Faster Than Light You Could Travel Backwards In Time And Exist In Two Places At Once.

If You're A Woman Writer, Sometime, Somewhere, You Will Be Asked: Do You Think Of Yourself As A Writer First, Or As A Woman First? Look Out. Whoever Asks This Hates And Fears Both Writing And Women.

The Sands Of Time Are Quicksands ... So Much Can Sink Into Them Without A Trace.

Without A Trace

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.

Why Aren't We Investing More In Alternate Tech? The Saudi Arabians Are, Scottish Power Is. I Was Just There. Could It Be That We're Counting On The Oil Going On Forever And Ever And Ever And Us Having All Of It And Getting Very Rich?

Each Form Has Its Pluses And Its Minuses.

The Way Love Feels Is Always Only Approximate. 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.

In My Dreams Of This City I Am Always Lost.

Why Can't I Believe? She Asked The Darkness. Behind Her Eyelids She Saw An Animal. It Was Golden Colour, With Gentle Green Eyes And Canine Teeth, And Curly Wool Instead Of Fur. It Opened Its Mouth, But It Did Not Speak. Instead, It Yawned.it Gazed At Her. She Gazed At It. "you Are The Effect Of A Carefully Calibrated Blend Of Plant Toxins," She Told It.then She Fell Asleep.

Money As Such Is, As Oscar Wilde Said, Perfectly Useless. You Can't Eat It, Drink It, Shelter Yourself From The Cold With It, Wear It, Or Make Love With It Unless Deeply Disturbed. In And Of Itself, It Has No Emotions, No Mind, And No Conscience. It Doesn't Put Out Flowers Or Have Children, And It Makes A Lousy Pet. It Has Meaning Only When It Circulates, And Is Exchanged For Other Things; And Money Doesn't Do That For Itself. People Do That, Using Money As A Symbolic Token.

Writing Is Alone, But I Don't Think It's Lonely. Ask Any Writer If They Feel Lonely When They're Writing Their Book, And I Think They'll Say No.

I Myself Have 12 Hats And Each One Represents A Different Personality. Why Just Be Yourself.

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.

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 Aas 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.

Why Is It We Want So Badly To Memorialize Ourselves? Even While We're Still Alive. We Wish To Assert Our Existence, Like Dogs Peeing On Fire Hydrants. We Put On Display Our Framed Photographs, Our Parchment Diplomas, Our Silver-plated Cups; We Monogram Our Linen, We Carve Our Names On Trees, We Scrawl Them On Washroom Walls. It's All The Same Impulse. What Do We Hope From It? Applause, Envy, Respect? Or Simply Attention, Of Any Kind We Can Get? At The Very Least We Want A Witness. We Can't Stand The Idea Of Our Own Voices Falling Silent Finally, Like A Radio Running Down.

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.

A Language Is Everything You Do.

So Crake Never Remembered His Dreams. It's Snowman That Remembers Them Instead. Worse Than Remembers: He's Immersed In Them, He'd Wading Through Them, He's Stuck In Them. Every Moment He's Lived In The Past Few Months Was Dreamed First By Crake. No Wonder Crake Screamed So Much.

Storytelling Is A Very Old Human Skill That Gives Us An Evolutionary Advantage. If You Can Tell Young People How You Kill An Emu, Acted Out In Song Or Dance, Or That Uncle George Was Eaten By A Croc Over There, Don't Go There To Swim, Then Those Young People Don't Have To Find Out By Trial And Error.

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'?

Because You Are Never Here But Always There, I Forget Not You But What You Look Like You Drift Down The Street In The Rain, Your Face Dissolving, Changing Shape, The Colours Running Together My Walls Absorb You, Breathe You Forth Again, You Resume Yourself, I Do Not Recognize You You Rest On The Bed Watching Me Watching You, We Will Never Know Each Other Any Better Than We Do Now

There Is So Much Going On All Over The World That It's Impossible For One Person To Keep Up. And I Can't.

Time In Dreams Is Frozen. You Can Never Get Away From Where You've Been.

We Pulled The Seeds Out And Scattered Them On Their Flossy Parachutes, Leaving Only The Leathery Brownish Yellow Tongue, Soft As The Inside Of An Elbow.

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.

Cleverness Is A Quality A Man Likes To Have In His Wife As Long As She Is Some Distance Away From Him. Up Close, He'll Take Kindness Any Day Of The Week, If There's Nothing More Alluring To Be Had.

I Knew What Love Was Supposed To Be: Obsession With Undertones Of Nausea.

If You Feel That There's The Author And Then The Character, Then The Book Is Not Working. People Have A Habit Of Identifying The Author With The Narrator, And You Can't, Obviously, Be All Of The Narrators In All Of Your Books, Or Else You'd Be A Very Strange Person Indeed.

Where Do The Words Go When We Have Said Them?

Sometimes Reactions Can Be Quite Surprising: Readers Like Things That You, The Author, Feel You've Barely Gotten Away With; Or They Dislike One Of The Parts You Secretly Think Is One Of Your Little Gems.

There's Blood, A Taste I Remember. It Tastes Of Orange Popsicles, Penny Gumballs, Red Licorice, Gnawed Hair, Dirty Ice.

The Problem With Meditating Is I Generally Go To Sleep, And That's Because I'm Doing It Wrong.

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

Neither Of Us Says The Word Love, Not Once. It Would Be Tempting Fate; It Would Be Romance, Bad Luck.

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Miranda Richardson

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