Background Image

...

If It's All Instruction, You Get Annoyed With It And Bored, And You Stop Reading. If It's All Entertainment, You Read It Quite Quickly, Your Heart Going Pitty-pat, Pitty-pat. But When You Finish, That's It. You're Not Going To Think About It Much Afterward, Apart From The Odd Nightmare. You're Not Going To Read That Book Again.

-Margaret Atwood

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

If It's All Instruction,

Margaret Atwood

...

If It's All Instruction, You Get Annoyed With It And Bored, And You Stop Reading. If It's All Entertainment, You Read It Quite Quickly, Your Heart Going Pitty-pat, Pitty-pat. But When You Finish, That's It. You're Not Going To Think About It Much Afterward, Apart From The Odd Nightmare. You're Not Going To Read That Book Again.

Views: 33092

Topic

More From Margaret Atwood

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

You Can Think Clearly Only With Your Clothes On.

I Saw All Of The Films [based On The Tempest] Available, Including The One With Helen Mirren In Which Prospero Is Prospera - You Wonder, "would It Work?" But It Does, Because Anything She Does Works.

A Word After A Word After A Word Is Power.

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.

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.

No Matter How Much You've Been Warned, Death Always Comes Without Knocking. Why Now? Is The Cry. Why So Soon? It's The Cry Of A Child Being Called Home At Dusk.

In View Of The Fading Animals The Proliferation Of Sewers And Fears The Sea Clogging, The Air Nearing Extinction We Should Be Kind, We Should Take Warning, We Should Forgive Each Other Instead We Are Opposite, We Touch As Though Attacking, The Gifts We Bring Even In Good Faith Maybe Warp In Our Hands To Implements, To Manoeuvres

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.

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

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

Where Do The Words Go When We Have Said Them?

Home Is Where The Heart Is, I Thought Now, Gathering Myself Together In Betty's Luncheonette. I Had No Heart Any More, It Had Been Broken; Or Not Broken, It Simply Wasn't There Any More. It Had Been Scooped Neatly Out Of Me Like The Yolk From A Hard-boiled Egg, Leaving The Rest Of Me Bloodless And Congealed And Hollow. I'm Heartless, I Thought. Therefore I'm Homeless.

I Myself Discovered Many Authors Through School Reading Lists And Through School Anthologies. The Positives Are: Young Readers Can Find The World Opening Up To Them Through Books They Study. The Negatives May Include Bad Experiences Kids Have - If They Don't Like The Book Or The Teacher, Or The Way The Book Is Taught.

In The Evenings There's Been Thunder, A Distant Bumping And Stumbling, Like God On A Sullen Binge.

There Is Something Reassuring About The Toilets. Bodily Functions At Least Remain Democratic. Everybody Shits.

Bodily Functions

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

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.

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

The Cemetery Has ... An Inscription: 'though I Walk Through The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death I Will Fear No Evil, For Thou Art With Me.' Yes, It Does Feel Deceptively Safer With Two; But Thou Is A Slippery Character. Every Thou I've Known Has Had A Way Of Going Missing.

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

There's Nothing Like A Shovel Full Of Dirt To Encourage Literacy.

Toast Was A Pointless Invention From The Dark Ages. Toast Was An Implement Of Torture That Caused All Those Subjected To It To Regurgitate In Verbal Form The Sins And Crimes Of Their Past Lives. Toast Was A Ritual Item Devoured By Fetishists In The Belief That It Would Enhance Their Kinetic And Sexual Powers. Toast Cannot Be Explained By Any Rational Means. Toast Is Me. I Am Toast.

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.

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.

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 Could See How You Could Do Extreme Things For The Person You Loved. Adam One Said That When You Loved A Person, That Love Might Not Always Get Returned The Way You Wanted, But It Was A Good Thing Anyway Because Love Went Out All Around You Like An Energy Wave, And A Creature You Didn't Know Would Be Helped By It.

Gardening Is Not A Rational Act.

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

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.

I Would Rather Dance As A Ballerina, Though Faultily, Than As A Flawless Clown.

Always Good To Take A Look At The Long List For The Mann Booker, For The Commonwealth. It Gives You An Overview.there Is So Much Going On All Over The World That It's Impossible For One Person To Keep Up. And I Can't.

If You Get Hungry Enough, They Say, You Start Eating Your Own Heart.

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

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.

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 Don't Think The Relationship Between Novels And Realities Are One To One. Of Course Novels Play Different Roles. It's Essentially Just A Long Narrative Form. What You Use That Long Narrative Form For Can Be Very Different.

He's Lost Something, Some Illusion I Used To Think Was Necessary To Him. He's Come To Realize He Too Is Human. Or Is This A Performance, For My Benefit, To Show Me He's Up-to-date? Maybe Men Shouldn't Have Been Told About Their Own Humanity. It's Only Made Them Uncomfortable. It's Only Made Them Trickier, Slier, More Evasive, Harder To Read.

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

Science Fiction Is Filled With Martians And Space Travel To Other Planets, And Things Like That.

The Human Moral Keyboard Is Limited ... There's Nothing You Can Play On It That Hasn't Been Played Before. And, My Dear Friends, I Am Sorry To Say This, But It Has Its Lower Notes.

How Easy It Is, Treachery. You Just Slide Into It.

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.

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.

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

For Me The Experience Of Writing Is Really An Experience Of Losing Control.... I Think It's Very Much Like Dreaming Or Like Surfing. You Go Out There And Wait For A Wave, And When It Comes It Takes You Somewhere And You Don't Know Where It'll Go.

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

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

The Trickle-down Theory Of Economics Has It That It's Good For Rich People To Get Even Richer Because Some Of Their Wealth Will Trickle Own, Through Their No Doubt Lavish Spending, Upon Those Who Stand Below Them On The Economic Ladder. Notice That The Metaphor Is Not That Of A Gushing Waterfall But Of A Leaking Tap: Even The Most Optimistic Endorsers Of This Concept Do Not Picture Very Much Real Flow, As Their Language Reveals" Pg. 102.

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

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.

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.

And She Finds It Difficult To Believe—that A Person Would Love Her Even When She Isn't Trying. Trying To Figure Out What Other People Need, Trying To Be Worthy.

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

The Reason They Invented Coffins, To Lock The Dead In, Preserve Them, They Put Makeup On Them; They Didn't Want Them Spreading Or Changing Into Anything Else. The Stone With The Name And Date Was On Them To Weight Them Down.

Every Ending Is Arbitrary, Because The End Is Where You Write The End. A Period, A Dot Of Punctuation, A Point Of Stasis. A Pinprick In The Paper: You Could Put Your Eye To It And See Through, To The Other Side, To The Beginning Of Something Else. Or, As Tony Says To Her Students, Time Is Not A Solid, Like Wood, But A Fluid, Like Water Or The Wind. It Doesn't Come Neatly Cut Into Even-sized Length, Into Decades And Centuries. Nevertheless, For Our Purposes We Have To Pretend It Does. The End Of Any History Is A Lie In Which We All Agree To Conspire.

The Truth Is Seldom Welcome, Especially At Dinner.

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

They Spent The First Three Years Of School Getting You To Pretend Stuff And Then The Rest Of It Marking You Down If You Did The Same Thing.

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.

The Future Of Narrative? Built In, Part Of The Human Template. Not Going Away. The Future Of The Codex Book, With Pages And So Forth? A Platform For Transmitting Narratives.

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.

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.

Short Forms Are Returning Online. Interactivity Is Coming Back; It Was Always There In Oral Storytelling. Each Form Has Its Pluses And Its Minuses.

Madness Is Only An Amplification Of What You Already Are.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Life's Not Fair; Why Should I Be?

Like The Trains, She's Never On Time And Always Departing.

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.

We Are Very Short On Organs, And The Pig Solution Is Probably A Lot Better Than The Human Clone Solution - Though Maybe Not For The Pigs.

It's A Feature Of Our Age That If You Write A Work Of Fiction, Everyone Assumes That The People And Events In It Are Disguised Biography — But If You Write Your Biography, It's Equally Assumed You're Lying Your Head Off.

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

A Paradox, The Doughnut Hole. Empty Space, Once, But Now They've Learned To Market Even That. A Minus Quantity; Nothing, Rendered Edible. I Wondered If They Might Be Used-metaphorically, Of Course-to Demonstrate The Existence Of God. Does Naming A Sphere Of Nothingness Transmute It Into Being?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It's Clear, It's Fresh, Like A Mint Candy.

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.

They Seemed To Be Able To Choose. We Seemed To Be Able To Choose, Then. We Were A Society Dying Of Too Much Choice.

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.

When Things Are Really Dismal, You Can Laugh, Or You Can Cave In Completely.

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

Blank Pages Inspire Me With Terror.

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

Foreignness Is All Around. Only In The Heart Of The Heart Of The Country, Namely The Heart Of The United States, Can You Avoid Such A Thing. In The Center Of An Empire, You Can Think Of Your Experience As Universal. Outside The Empire Or On The Fringes Of The Empire, You Cannot.

... 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.

The Proper Study Of Mankind Is Everything.

I Am Not Your Justification For Existence.

His Father Was Self-made, But His Mother Was Constructed By Others, And Such Edifices Are Notoriously Fragile.

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.

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.

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

Great Literature

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

If A God Showed Up Every Time You Put A Quarter In The Prayer Slot It Wouldn't Be God, It Would Be A Puppet That You Could Control By Doing That...that Would Make The Deity Subservient To You. So It Wouldn't Be A Deity Would It?

I Feel Like The Word Shatter.

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

Snowman Wakes Before Dawn.

Nevertheless, Blood Is Thicker Than Water, As Anyone Knows Who Has Tasted Both.

Pink Is Supposed To Weaken Your Enemies, Make Them Go Soft On You, Which Must Be Why It's Used For Baby Girls. It's A Wonder The Military Hasn't Got On To This.

Every Utopia - Let's Just Stick With The Literary Ones - Faces The Same Problem: What Do You Do With The People Who Don't Fit In?

I Used To Act In College, But Always Comedy. Didn't Do [william] Shakespeare - Did Ben Jonson.

I Think Calling It Climate Change Is Rather Limiting. I Would Rather Call It The Everything Change.

Within One's Own Family Money Is Not The Measure Of Things, Unless The Person Is An Absolute Scrooge. Only The Most Extreme Kind Of Monster Would Put A Price On Everything. There Are All Kinds Of Other Things That We Are Not Supposed To Sell - Political Influence Being One Of Them. We Too Rarely Have Public Conversations About The Common Sense Of Money. We Too Rarely Talk About The Human Cost Of Putting Some Of These Economic Measures Into Effect.

My Own View Of Myself Was That I Was Small And Innocuous, A Marshmallow Compared To The Others. I Was A Poor Shot With A 22, For Instance, And Not Very Good With An Ax. It Took Me A Long Time To Figure Out That The Youngest In A Family Of Dragons Is Still A Dragon From The Point Of View Of Those Who Find Dragons Alarming.

If You're Waiting For The Perfect Moment, You'll Never Write A Thing Because It Will Never Arrive. I Have No Routine. I Have No Foolproof Anything. There's Nothing Foolproof.

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.

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.

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.

Falling In Love, Although It Resulted In Altered Body Chemistry And Was Therefore Real, Was A Hormonally Induced Delusional State, According To Him. In Addition It Was Humiliating, Because It Put You At A Disadvantage, It Gave The Love Object Too Much Power. As For Sex Per Se, It Lacked Both Challenge And Novelty, And Was On The Whole A Deeply Imperfect Solution To The Problem Of Intergenerational Genetic Transfer.

Falling In Love

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.

What You Get Is No Longer What You See.

As We Know From The Study Of History, No New System Can Impose Itself Upon A Previous One Without Incorporating Many Of The Elements To Be Found In The Latter.

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

Nothing Is More Difficult Than To Understand The Dead, I've Found; But Nothing Is More Dangerous Than To Ignore Them.

You Might 'write From The Heart,' But You'd Better Polish With Your Brain.

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.

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.

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

If Social Stability Goes Pear-shaped, You Have A Choice Between Anarchy And Dictatorship. Most People Will Opt For More Security, Even If They Have To Give Up Some Personal Freedom.

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.

The Prospect Of His Future Life Stretched Before Him Like A Sentence; Not A Prison Sentence But A Long-winded Sentence With A Lot Of Unnecessary Subordinate Clauses, As He Was Soon In The Habit Of Quipping During Happy Hour Pickup Time At The Local Campus Bars And Pubs. He Couldn’t Say He Was Looking Forward To It, This Rest-of-his-life.

Looking Forward

You Fit Into Me Like A Hook Into An Eye A Fish Hook An Open Eye

There's More Private Security In The United States Than There Are Publicly Funded Forces, Like Police. What You Don't Want Is A Meld Of Government And Commerce - You Really Want To Keep Those Two Things Separate - Because Once You Have That Meld, You've Got Megacorruption, And You Have No Third Force To Whom You Can Say This Stuff Is Poisoning Our Kids.

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

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 Problem Is Huge. We've Just Added Seventy-five Million People To The Already Large Proportion Of People In The World Who Are Malnourished All The Time, Whose Bodies Are Being Starved.

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

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

In Paradise There Are No Stories, Because There Are No Journeys.

What A Moron I Was To Think You Were Sweet And Innocent, When It Turns Out You Were Actually College-educated The Whole Time!

Truly Amazing, What People Can Get Used To, As Long As There Are A Few Compensations.

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

I Have A Fork And A Spoon, But Never A Knife… As If I’m Lacking Manual Skills Or Teeth. I Have Both, However. That’s Why I’m Not Allowed A Knife.

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.

Publishing A Book Is Like Stuffing A Note Into A Bottle And Hurling It Into The Sea. Some Bottles Drown, Some Come Safe To Land, Where The Notes Are Read And Then Possibly Cherished, Or Else Misinterpreted, Or Else Understood All Too Well By Those Who Hate The Message. You Never Know Who Your Readers Might Be.

A Fist Is More Than The Sum Of Its Fingers.

Mathematical Logic

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.

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

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.

I Exist In Two Places, Here And Where You Are.

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

All Stories Are About Wolves. All Worth Repeating, That Is. Anything Else Is Sentimental Drivel. ...think About It. There's Escaping From The Wolves, Fighting The Wolves, Capturing The Wolves, Taming The Wolves. Being Thrown To The Wolves, Or Throwing Others To The Wolves So The Wolves Will Eat Them Instead Of You. Running With The Wolf Pack. Turning Into A Wolf. Best Of All, Turning Into The Head Wolf. No Other Decent Stories Exist.

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.

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

When I Am Lonely For Boys It’s Their Bodies I Miss. I Study Their Hands Lifting The Cigarettes In The Darkness Of The Movie Theaters, The Slope Of A Shoulder, The Angle Of A Hip. Looking At Them Sideways, I Examine Them In Different Lights. My Love For Them Is Visual: That Is The Part Of Them I Would Like To Possess. Don’t Move, I Think. Stay Like That, Let Me Have That.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Keeping Secrets

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

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

It Was Very Interesting To Me That When Louisiana Was Destroyed In That Flood The Fundamentalists Were Very Quick To Say, It's The Punishment Of God On A Sinful City. Now That The Oil Industry Has Been So Hard Hit In Galveston, Are They Up On Their Pulpits Saying, God Is Punishing The Oil Industry? No, No, No!

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

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.

When We Think Of The Past It's The Beautiful Things We Pick Out. We Want To Believe It Was All Like That.

Love Was Like A Steamroller. There Was No Avoiding It; It Went Over You And You Came Out Flat.

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

But Nothing Is More Opaque Than Absolute Transparency.

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.

As William Gibson Says, The Future Is Already Here But It's Lumpy. It's Unevenly Distributed. Some People Are Already Living This, The Ones On Low-lying Islands Off The Coast Of India Are Being Swept Away, You Know, It's Already Happening To Some People. We Happen To Be Very Lucky So Far.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Too Much God And You Overdose. God Needs To Be Filtered.

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

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

Ordinary, Said Aunt Lydia, Is What You Are Used To. This May Not Seem Ordinary To You Now, But After A Time It Will. It Will Become Ordinary.

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.

Literature Is Not Only A Mirror; It Is A Map, A Geography Of The Mind.

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?

I'm The Only Person You've Ever Met Who Has Read Longfellow.

...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.

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

Now That I Am Dead, I Know Everything.

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.

She Who Pays The Undertaker Calls The Tune.

Books Are Frozen Voices, In The Same Way That Musical Scores Are Frozen Music. The Score Is A Way Of Transmitting The Music To Someone Who Can Play It, Releasing It Into The Air Where It Can Once More Be Heard. And The Black Alphabet Marks On The Page Represent Words That Were Once Spoken, If Only In The Writer's Head. They Lie There Inert Until A Reader Comes Along And Transforms The Letters Into Living Sounds. The Reader Is The Musician Of The Book: Each Reader May Read The Same Text, Just As Each Violinist Plays The Same Piece, But Each Interpretation Is Different.

Walking Along Past The Store Windows, Into Which She Peers With Her Usual Eagerness, Her Usual Sense That Maybe, Today, She Will Discover Behind Them Something That Will Truly Be Worth Seeing, She Feels As If Her Feet Are Not On Cement At All But On Ice. The Blade Of The Skate Floats, She Knows, On A Thin Film Of Water, Which It Melts By Pressure And Which Freezes Behind It. This Is The Freedom Of The Present Tense, This Sliding Edge.

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

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.

When I Finally Went To School I Had To Adjust To Other Girls And Learn Their Fiendish Ways. Having Learnt Them, I Turned Them On All And Sundry.

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.

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.

I Want, I Don’t Want. How Can One Live With Such A Heart?

Write Down The Thoughts And Even More, Write Down A Specific Line. If You Don't, It'll Fly Away Forever.

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.

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

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

I Don't Think Of Poetry As A 'rational' Activity But As An Aural One. My Poems Usually Begin With Words Or Phrases Which Appeal More Because Of Their Sound Than Their Meaning, And The Movement And Phrasing Of A Poem Are Very Important To Me.

As An Artist Your First Loyalty Is To Your Art. Unless This Is The Case, You're Going To Be A Second-rate Artist.

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

Trending Author

Charles W. Chesnutt

Christopher McDougall

Category