Background Image

...

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.

-Margaret Atwood

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Don't Know Why

Margaret Atwood

...

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.

Views: 63173

Topic

More From Margaret Atwood

Yelling Is A Form Of Publishing

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.

The Eskimos Had Fifty-two Names For Snow Because It Was Important To Them: There Ought To Be As Many For Love.

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

If You Knew What Was Going To Happen, If You Knew Everything That Was Going To Happen Next—if You Knew In Advance The Consequences Of Your Own Actions—you'd Be Doomed. You'd Be Ruined As God. You'd Be A Stone. You'd Never Eat Or Drink Or Laugh Or Get Out Of Bed In The Morning. You'd Never Love Anyone, Ever Again. You'd Never Dare To.

No Male Writer Is Likely To Be Asked To Sit On A Panel Addressing Itself To The Special Problems Of A Male Writer.

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

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'?

This Is How The Girl Who Couldn't Speak And The Man Who Couldn't See Fell In Love.

If I Pick Up A Book With Vampires On The Cover, I Want There To Be Vampires. If I Pick Up A Book With Spaceships On The Cover, I Want Spaceships. If I See One With Dragons, I Want There To Be Dragons Inside The Book. Proper Labeling. Ethical Labeling.

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

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

I Began Writing At The Age Of 5, But There Was A Dark Period Between The Ages Of 8 And 16 When I Didn't Write. I Started Again At 16. And Have No Idea Why, But It Was Suddenly The Only Thing I Wanted To Do.

Oppression Involves A Failure Of The Imagination: The Failure To Imagine The Full Humanity Of Other Human Beings.

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.

Every Budding Dictatorship Begins By Muzzling The Artists, Because They're A Mouthy Lot And They Don't Line Up And Salute Very Easily.

Men Are Not To Be Told Anything They Might Find Too Painful; The Secret Depths Of Human Nature, The Sordid Physicalities, Might Overwhelm Or Damage Them. For Instance, Men Often Faint At The Sight Of Their Own Blood, To Which They Are Not Accustomed. For This Reason You Should Never Stand Behind One In The Line At The Red Cross Donor Clinic.

If You Want To Be A Writer, You Should Go Into The Largest Library You Can Find And Stand There Contemplating The Books That Have Been Written. Then You Should Ask Yourself, 'do I Really Have Anything To Add?' If You Have The Arrogance Or The Humility To Say Yes, You Will Know You Have The Vocation.

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

I'm Not Interested In Cutting The Feet Off My Characters Or Stretching Them To Make Them Fit My Certain Political View.

... 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.

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.

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.

Without The Protection Of Surliness And Levity, All Children Would Be Crushed By The Past—the Past Of Others, Loaded Onto Their Shoulders. Selfishness Is Their Saving Grace.

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

I Didn't Want Him To Become Gray And Multi-dimensional And Complicated Like Everyone Else. Was Every Heathcliff A Linton In Disguise?

There Is Good And Mediocre Writing Within Every Genre.

Everybody Was Going Along Thinking That It Was A Day Like Any Other Day, And Bang, Down Went The Twin Towers. Changed Everything. So You Can't Really Predict The Future, But You Can Say, "boy, Are Those Glaciers Ever Melting." You Can Measure That, And You Can Say, "when They're All Melted There Won't Be Any Athabasca River," And You Can Say, "what Will Happen To The Oil Sands Then?" Because You Need A Lot Of Water To Make That Oil. "where's That Going To Come From?" You Can Say Things Like That.

Each Form Has Its Pluses And Its Minuses.

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

I Know That Some Books And Some Writers, You Can Pretty Much Draw A Square Around It And Say, 'nobody Under 40,' Or 'nobody Under 25.' With My Books, It Always Has Been, And Continues To Be, Spread Right Across The Board, And I Think The Operative Term Is 'reader.'

In Heaven, There Are No Debts - All Have Been Paid, One Way Or Another - But In Hell There's Nothing But Debts, And A Great Deal Of Payment Is Exacted, Though You Can't Ever Get All Paid Up. You Have To Pay, And Pay, And Keep On Paying. So Hell Is Like An Infernal Maxed-out Credit Card That Multiplies The Charges Endlessly.

Your Friend Is Intellectually Honourable," Jimmy's Mother Would Say. "he Doesn't Lie To Himself.

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.

As Soon As You Have A Language That Has A Past Tense And A Future Tense You're Going To Say, 'where Did We Come From, What Happens Next?' The Ability To Remember The Past Helps Us Plan The Future.

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.

I Am Not Your Justification For Existence.

Speculative Fiction Encompasses That Which We Could Actually Do. Sci-fi Is That Which We're Probably Not Going To See.

Speculative Fiction

Wars Happen Because The Ones Who Start Them Think They Can Win.

What Else Can I Do? Once You've Gone This Far You Aren't Fit For Anything Else. Something Happens To Your Mind. You're Overqualified, Overspecialized, And Everybody Knows It. Nobody In Any Other Game Would Be Crazy Enough To Hire Me. I Wouldn't Even Make A Good Ditch-digger, I'd Start Tearing Apart The Sewer-system, Trying To Pick-axe And Unearth All Those Chthonic Symbols - Pipes, Valves, Cloacal Conduits... No, No. I'll Have To Be A Slave In The Paper-mines For All Time.

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.

A Divorce Is Like An Amputation: You Survive It, But There's Less Of You.

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.

Blondes Are Like White Mice, You Only Find Them In Cages. They Wouldn’t Last Long In Nature. They’re Too Conspicuous.

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.

This Has Been Her Problem All Her Life: Picturing Other People's Responses. She's Too Good At It. She Can Picture The Response Of Anyone--other People's Reactions, Their Emotions, Their Criticisms, Their Demands--but Somehow They Don't Reciprocate. Maybe They Can't. Maybe They Lack The Gift, If It Is One.

There's The Story, Then There's The Real Story, Then There's The Story Of How The Story Came To Be Told. Then There's What You Leave Out Of The Story. Which Is Part Of The Story Too.

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.

Axiom: You Are A Sea. Your Eye- Lids Curve Over Chaos My Hands Where They Touch You, Create Small Inhabited Islands Soon You Will Be All Earth: A Known Land, A Country.

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

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.

Water Does Not Resist. Water Flows. When You Plunge Your Hand Into It, All You Feel Is A Caress.

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

I Am Rather Saddened At The End Of A Book. I Think Most Writers Find This. It's Like A Friend Departing On A Voyage.

For Years I Wanted To Be Older, And Now I Am.

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

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

Night Falls. Or Has Fallen. Why Is It That Night Falls, Instead Of Rising, Like The Dawn? Yet If You Look East, At Sunset, You Can See Night Rising, Not Falling; Darkness Lifting Into The Sky, Up From The Horizon, Like A Black Sun Behind Cloud Cover. Like Smoke From An Unseen Fire, A Line Of Fire Just Below The Horizon, Brushfire Or A Burning City. Maybe Night Falls Because It’s Heavy, A Thick Curtain Pulled Up Over The Eyes. Wool Blanket.

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

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

The Truth Is Seldom Welcome, Especially At Dinner.

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.

The Society In 'the Handmaid's Tale' Is A Throwback To The Early Puritans Whom I Studied Extensively At Harvard Under Perry Miller, To Whom The Book Is Dedicated.

I Feel Despised There, For Having So Little Money; Also For Once Having Had So Much. I Never Actually Had It, Of Course. Father Had It, And Then Richard. But Money Was Imputed To Me, The Same Way Crimes Are Imputed To Those Who've Simply Been Present At Them.

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.

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.

No More Photos. Surely There Are Enough. No More Shadows Of Myself Thrown By Light Onto Pieces Of Paper, Onto Squares Of Plastic. No More Of My Eyes, Mouths, Noses, Moods, Bad Angles. No More Yawns, Teeth, Wrinkles. I Suffer From My Own Multiplicity. Two Or Three Images Would Have Been Enough, Or Four, Or Five. That Would Have Allowed For A Firm Idea: This Is She. As It Is, I'm Watery, I Ripple, From Moment To Moment I Dissolve Into My Other Selves. Turn The Page: You, Looking, Are Newly Confused. You Know Me Too Well To Know Me. Or Not Too Well: Too Much.

All It Takes,” Said Crake, “is The Elimination Of One Generation. One Generation Of Anything. Beetles, Trees, Microbes, Scientists, Speakers Of French, Whatever. Break The Link In Time Between One Generation And The Next, And It’s Game Over Forever.

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

You Refuse To Own Yourself, You Permit Others To Do It For You

The Road To Death Is A Lonely Highway, And Longer Than It Apears, Even When It Leads Straight Down From The Scaffold, By Way Of A Rope; And It's A Dark Road, With Never Any Moon Shining On It, To Light Your Way.

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 ... Providence Appears To Protect Such Women, Maybe Out Of Astonishment.

The Facts Of This World Seen Clearly Are Seen Through Tears.

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

I Am Nervous About Dogmas Of Any Kind, Whether They Be Religious, Political, Or Anti-religious. Too Many Heads Have Rolled Because Of Them.

When You Are In The Middle Of A Story It Isn't A Story At All, But Only A Confusion; A Dark Roaring, A Blindness, A Wreckage Of Shattered Glass And Splintered Wood; Like A House In A Whirlwind, Or Else A Boat Crushed By The Icebergs Or Swept Over The Rapids, And All Aboard Powerless To Stop It. It's Only Afterwards That It Becomes Anything Like A Story At All. When You Are Telling It, To Yourself Or To Someone Else.

We Have Been Shark To One Another, But Also Lifeboat.

All Observations Of Life Are Harsh, Because Life Is. I Lament That Fact, But I Cannot Change It.

Poetry Is Where The Language Is Renewed.

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.

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

When I Was Young I Believed That "nonfiction" Meant "true." But You Read A History Written In, Say, 1920 And A History Of The Same Events Written In 1995 And They're Very Different. There May Not Be One Truth - There May Be Several Truths - But Saying That Is Not To Say That Reality Doesn't Exist.

But I Began Then To Think Of Time As Having A Shape, Something You Could See, Like A Series Of Liquid Transparencies, One Laid On Top Of Another.

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.

Some Of The Old Diseases That We Think Are Gone - Case In Point, Measles - Are Back, Now That Somebody Has Spread Around, In A Very Wicked Way, The Idea That These Inoculations Were Making Children Autistic. Now We're Getting Outbreaks That Are Killing Children. The End Result Is, If You Create A Population That Lacks Immunity, And Diseases Are Still There, You're Going To Get Outbreaks And You're Going To Get Death.

No Luck Was Dumb Because Luck Was Just Another Name For Miracle.

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

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.

Time Is Not A Thing That Passes ... It's A Sea On Which You Float.

There's Something To Be Said For Hunger: At Least It Lets You Know You're Still Alive.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

One Of The Reasons [william] Shakespeare Is So Endlessly Fascinating Is That You Can Look At That Figure From About 10 Different Angles: Caliban In Shakespeare's Day Was Probably Viewed As A Sort Of Comic, Barbarian Type, But Into The 19th Century There Were Productions Where Caliban Was The Hero. He's A Potential Rapist Of A Minor. Is That A Good Thing? No, It Is Not. On The Other Hand, Prospero's Got Him Cooped Up In A Cave And Tortures Him If He Doesn't Do What Prospero Wants. Is That A Good Thing? No. Shakespeare Doesn't Let You Off Easy.

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

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.

The Interesting Thing About The Religious Component, For Me, Is That Jesus Hardly Mentions Sex At All. He's Pretty Interested In The Poor, He's Pretty Interested In Selling Your Worldly Goods And Storing Up Riches In Heaven. However, Religious Fundamentalists Have Made It All About Sex, And That's Like Saying, "look At The Sex And We're Just Not Going To Talk About What You May Be Doing In A Financial Way That Is Sinful."

My Family Was Scientifically Inclined: My Brother Did Turn Into A Neurophysiologist, And I Almost Became A Scientist Myself. I Could Have Gone That Way.

Whatever The Scientists May Come Up With, Writers And Artists Will Continue To Portray Altered Mental States, Simply Because Few Aspects Of Our Nature Fascinate People So Much. The So-called Mad Person Will Always Represent A Possible Future For Every Member Of The Audience - Who Knows When Such A Malady May Strike?

A Voice Is A Human Gift; It Should Be Cherished And Used, To Utter Fully Human Speech As Possible. Powerlessness And Silence Go Together.

Once Upon A Time, Novelists Of The 19th Century, Such As Charles Dickens, Published In Serial Form.

Once Upon A Time

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.

Every Aspect Of Human Technology Has A Dark Side, Including The Bow And Arrow.

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.

I Always Thought Eating Was A Ridiculous Activity Anyway. I'd Get Out Of It Myself If I Could, Though You've Got To Do It To Stay Alive, They Tell Me.

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.

What People Want Is Perfection," Said The Man. "in Themselves." "but They Need The Steps To It To Be Pointed Out," Said The Woman. "in A Simple Order," Said The Man. "with Encouragement," Said The Woman. "and A Positive Attitude.

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.

Every Night When I Go To Bed I Think, In The Morning I Will Wake Up In My Own House And Things Will Be Back The Way They Were. It Hasn’t Happened This Morning, Either.

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

The Objects I Chose Were Designed To Hold Something, But I Didn't Fill Them Up. They Remained Empty. They Were Little Symbolic Shrines To Thirst.

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

I'm A Fool, To Confuse This With Goodness. I Am Not Good. I Know Too Much To Be Good. I Know Myself. I Know Myself To Be Vengeful, Greedy, Secretive And Sly.

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 Tend To Feel If People Say They're Going To Do Something, They Will, If Given The Chance.

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?

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.

I Am Not My Childhood,' Snowman Says Out Loud.

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.

Now I Can See How That Can Happen. You Can Fall In Love With Anybody--a Fool, A Criminal, A Nothing. There Are No Good Rules.

Falling In Love

I Hate To Break This To You: One Of These Days I'm Going To Die. I Expect That When I Croak I'll No Longer Be Using Twitter, Unless I Can Do It From The Grave.

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

Please Don't Make The Mistake Of Thinking That 'oryx And Crake' Is Anti-science. Science Is A Way Of Knowing, And A Tool. Like All Ways Of Knowing And Tools, It Can Be Turned To Bad Uses. And It Can Be Bought And Sold, And It Often Is. But It Is Not In Itself Bad. Like Electricity, It's Neutral.

Richard Liked To Say He Picked Things Up For A Song, Which Was Odd, Because He Never Sang. He Never Even Whistled. He Was Not A Musical Person.

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

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

When We're Good, We're Very, Very Good, And When We're Bad, We're Horrid. This Is Not News, Because We're So Much More Inventive And We Have Two Hands, The Left And The Right. That Is How We Think. It's All Over Our Literature, And It's All Over The Way We Arrange Archetypes, The Good Version, The Bad Version, The God, The Devil, The Abel, The Cain, You Name It. We Arrange Things In Pairs Like That Because We Know About Ourselves.

Good Writing Takes Place At Intersections, At What You Might Call Knots, At Places Where The Society Is Snarled Or Knotted Up.

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

Great Literature

You Don't Look Back Along Time But Down Through It, Like Water. Sometimes This Comes To The Surface, Sometimes That, Sometimes Nothing. Nothing Goes Away.

Is Anything Wrong, Dear? The Old Joke Went. No, Why? You Moved. Just Don't Move.

Genres Aren't Closed Boxes. Stuff Flows Back And Forth Across The Borders All The Time.

Art Happens. It Happens When You Have The Craft And The Vocation And Are Waiting For Something Else, Something Extra, Or Maybe Not Waiting; In Any Case It Happens. It's The Extra Rabbit Coming Out Of The Hat, The One You Didn't Put There.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

My Brother And I Were Both Good At Science, And We Were Both Good At English Literature. Either One Of Us Could Have Gone Either Way.

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.

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

People Dressed In A Certain Kind Of Clothing Are Never Wrong. Also They Never Fart.

Writing Is Very Improvisational. It's Like Trying To Fix A Broken Sewing Machine With Safety Pins And Rubber Bands. A Lot Of Tinkering.

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.

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

I'm Not An Activist By Nature. I Am Suspicious Of Utopian Thinking And Equally Suspicious Of Its Alternate. I Would Prefer To Stay In The Writing Burrow And Play With My Imaginary Friends And Enemies. I Get Sucked Into These Things.

There Is Something Powerful In The Whispering Of Obscenities, About Those In Power. There's Something Delightful About It, Something Naughty, Secretive, Forbidden, Thrilling. It's Like A Spell, Of Sorts. It Deflates Them, Reduces Them To The Common Denominator Where They Can Be Dealt.

Children Were Vehicles For Passing Things Along. These Things Could Be Kingdoms, Rich Wedding Gifts, Stories, Grudges, Blood Feuds. Through Children, Alliances Were Forged; Through Children, Wrongs Were Avenged. To Have A Child Was To Set Loose A Force In The World.

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.

Canada Is A Balloon-puncturing Country. You Are Not Really Allowed To Be An Icon Unless You Also Make An Idiot Of Yourself.

We've Learned To See The World In Gasps.

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

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.

When Demons Are Required Someone Will Always Be Found To Supply The Part, And Whether You Step Forward Or Are Pushed Is All The Same In The End.

I Walk Away From Him. It's Enormously Pleasing To Me, This Walking Away. It's Like Being Able To Make People Appear And Vanish, At Will.

Debt Is Not Just A Money Thing. It's About Owing And Being Owed. Money Is Just One Thing You Can Exchange. You Can Exchange Good Deeds, You Can Exchange Revenge, You Can Exchange Murders.

Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down.

The Three Of Them Were Beautiful, In The Way All Girls Of That Age Are Beautiful. It Can't Be Helped, That Sort Of Beauty, Nor Can It Be Conserved; It's A Freshness, A Plumpness Of The Cells, That's Unearned And Temporary, And That Nothing Can Replicate. None Of Them Was Satisfied With It, However; Already They Were Making Attempts To Alter Themselves Into Some Impossible, Imaginary Mould, Plucking And Pencilling Away At Their Faces. I Didn't Blame Them, Having Done The Same Once Myself.

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.

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.

Blank Pages Inspire Me With Terror.

The Internet Is 95 Percent Porn And Spam

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

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.

Because I Am A Mother, I Am Capable Of Being Shocked: As I Never Was When I Was Not One.

For Drinking Life There Are Two Cups: The No Cup Is Bitter, The Yes Cup Is Yummy -- Now, Which One Would You Rather Have In Your Tummy?

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.

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

Happiness Is A Garden Walled With Glass: There's No Way In Or Out. In Paradise There Are No Stories, Because There Are No Journeys. It's Loss And Regret And Misery And Yearning That Drive The Story Forward, Along Its Twisted Road.

Nature Is To Zoos As God Is To Churches.

Jimmy Had Been Full Of Himself Back Then, Thinks Snowman With Indulgence And A Little Envy. He’d Been Unhappy Too, Of Course. It Went Without Saying, His Unhappiness. He’d Put A Lot Of Energy Into It.

Anyway, Maybe There Weren't Any Solutions. Human Society, Corpses And Rubble. It Never Learned, It Made The Same Cretinous Mistakes Over And Over, Trading Short-term Gain For Long-term Pain.

Where To Start Is The Problem, Because Nothing Begins When It Begins And Nothing's Over When It's Over, And Everything Needs A Preface: A Preface, A Postscript, A Chart Of Simultaneous Events.

A Movie About The Past Is Not The Same As The Past.

A Word After A Word After A Word Is Power.

As All Historians Know, The Past Is A Great Darkness, And Filled With Echoes.

Your Hand Is A Warm Stone I Hold Between Two Words.

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

Knowing Too Much About Other People Puts You In Their Power, They Have A Claim On You, You Are Forced To Understand Their Reasons For Doing Things And Then You Are Weakened.

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.

She Wasn't Ready To Settle Down, She Told Her Friends. That Was One Way Of Putting It. Another Was Would Have Been That She Had Not Found Anyone To Settle Down With. There Had Been Several Men In Her Life, But They Hadn't Been Convincing. They'd Been Somewhat Like Her Table - Quickly Acquired, Brightened Up A Little, But Temporary. The Time For That Kind Of Thing Was Running Out, However. She Was Tired Of Renting.

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

The Idea Of The Chickens With The Multiple Breasts And Thighs Came From An Urban Legend That Some Fast-food Places Had Developed Chickens With Four Thighs. It Wasn't True, But It Is A Suggestive Rumor.

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

A Truth Should Exist, It Should Not Be Used Like This. If I Love You Is That A Fact Or A Weapon?

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.

We Understand More Than We Know.

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.

We Lived In The Gaps Between The Stories

Hunger Is A Powerful Reorganizer Of The Conscience.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Without A Trace

Trending Author

Anthony Bourdain

Orson Scott Card

Jonathan Kellerman

Category