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Either I'm Alive Or I'm Dying, She Said To Daniel. Please Don't Feel You Can't Tell Me. Which Is It? Which Does It Feel Like? Said Daniel. He Patted Her Hand. You're Not Dead Yet. You're A Lot More Alive Than Many People. This Isn't Good Enough For Rennie. She Wants Something Definite, The Real Truth, One Way Or The Other. Then She Will Know What She Should Do Next. It's This Suspension, Hanging In A Void, This Half-life She Can't Bear. She Can't Bear Not Knowing. She Doesn't Want To Know.

-Margaret Atwood

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Either I'm Alive Or

Margaret Atwood

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Either I'm Alive Or I'm Dying, She Said To Daniel. Please Don't Feel You Can't Tell Me. Which Is It? Which Does It Feel Like? Said Daniel. He Patted Her Hand. You're Not Dead Yet. You're A Lot More Alive Than Many People. This Isn't Good Enough For Rennie. She Wants Something Definite, The Real Truth, One Way Or The Other. Then She Will Know What She Should Do Next. It's This Suspension, Hanging In A Void, This Half-life She Can't Bear. She Can't Bear Not Knowing. She Doesn't Want To Know.

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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 Tried To Visualize My Jealousy As A Yellowy-brown Cloud Boiling Around Inside Me, Then Going Out Through My Nose Like Smoke And Turning Into A Stone And Falling Down Into The Ground. That Did Work A Little. But In My Visualization A Plant Covered With Poison Berries Would Grow Out Of The Stone, Whether I Wanted It To Or Not.

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

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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.

Menopause. A Pause While You Reconsider Men.

Better Never Means Better For Everyone... It Always Means Worse, For Some.

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But Maybe Boredom Is Erotic, When Women Do It, For Men.

Time Has Not Stood Still. It Has Washed Over Me, Washed Me Away, As If I'm Nothing More Than A Woman Of Sand, Left By A Careless Child Too Near The Water.

Never Pray For Justice, Because You Might Get Some.

We Understand More Than We Know.

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

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

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

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In My Dreams Of This City I Am Always Lost.

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So Much Better To Travel Than To Arrive.

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I Was Warped Early By Ray Bradbury And Edgar Allan Poe. I Was Very Fond Of Franz Kafka.

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Stick A Shovel Into The Ground Almost Anywhere And Some Horrible Thing Or Other Will Come To Light. Good For Trade, We Thrive On Bones; Without Them There'd Be No Stories.

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

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.

The Only Way You Can Write The Truth Is To Assume That What You Set Down Will Never Be Read. Not By Any Other Person, And Not Even By Yourself At Some Later Date. Otherwise You Begin Excusing Yourself. You Must See The Writing As Emerging Like A Long Scroll Of Ink From The Index Finger Of Your Right Hand; You Must See Your Left Hand Erasing It.

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.

If I Waited For Perfection... I Would Never Write A Word.

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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

His Mouth Is On Me, His Hands, I Can't Wait And He's Moving, Already, Love, It's Been So Long, I'm Alive In My Skin, Again, Arms Around Him, Falling And Water Softly Everywhere, Never-ending.

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?

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

Vanity Is Becoming A Nuisance, I Can See Why Women Give It Up, Eventually. But I'm Not Ready For That Yet.

Freedom, Like Everything Else, Is Relative.

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

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.

Somebody Has Been A Complete Ratbag All Their Life And They've Gotten Away With It, And They Die Happy And Rich, We So Much Want To Believe That They're Going Off To The Halls Of Judgment, That Their Heart Will Be Weighed Against The Feather Of Truth, That It Will Be Heavy With Sin And It Will Be Eaten By A Crocodile. It's Almost Essential To Our Well-being To Have A Fallback Position Like That. It May Appear As If You've Gotten Away With It, But You'll Pay For It Later.

The Fact Is That Blank Pages Inspire Me With Terror. What Will I Put On Them? Will It Be Good Enough? Will I Have To Throw It Out?

I Stand On The Corner, Pretending I Am A Tree.

Eating Is Our Earliest Metaphor, Preceding Our Consciousness Of Gender Difference, Race, Nationality, And Language. We Eat Before We Talk.

He Might Die For Her, But Living For Her Would Be Quite Different.

Writing Poetry Is A State Of Free Float.

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?

Gravity Works In Your Life, The Notion Of Free Will Works In Your Life, However Problematic It May At Times Be.

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.

The Act Of Making A Photograph Is Less A Question Of What Is Being Looked At Than How.

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.

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

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

Powerlessness And Silence Go Together.

It Made Him Feel Invisible—not That He Wanted To Feel Anything Else.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Best Way Of Being Kind To Bears Is Not To Be Very Close To Them.

There Is No Fool Like An Educated Fool.

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

She Had Her Reasons. Not That They Were The Same As Anybody Else's Reasons.

Little Girls Are Cute And Small Only To Adults. To One Another They Are Not Cute. They Are Life-sized.

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Christina Hendricks

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