Background Image

...

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.

-Margaret Atwood

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

It's A Critical Fallacy

Margaret Atwood

...

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.

Views: 3695

Topic

More From Margaret Atwood

Support Your Libraries... Or Else!

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.

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

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

Make The Verses Flow Together. If A Following Verse Has Nothing To Do With The Previous, You May Lose Our Listener/reader. You Want A Smooth Flow To Hear Or Read, And It's Easier To Memorize.

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.

So Much For Endings. Beginnings Are Always More Fun. True Connoisseurs, However, Are Known To Favor The Stretch In Between, Since It's The Hardest To Do Anything With. That's About All That Can Be Said For Plots, Which Anyway Are Just One Thing After Another, A What And A What And A What.

But We Still Find The World Astounding, We Can't Get Enough Of It; Even As It Shrivels, Even As Its Many Lights Flicker And Are Extinguished (the Tigers, The Leopard Frogs, The Plunging Dolphin Flukes), Flicker And Are Extinguished, By Us, By Us, We Gaze And Gaze. 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.

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.

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

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.

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

The Newspaper Stories Were Like Dreams To Us, Bad Dreams Dreamt By Others. How Awful, We Would Say, And They Were, But They Were Awful Without Being Believable. They Were Too Melodramatic, They Had A Dimension That Was Not The Dimension Of Our Lives. 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.

Life's Not Fair; Why Should I Be?

A Rat In A Maze Is Free To Go Anywhere, As Long As It Stays Inside The Maze.

All I Can Hope For Is A Reconstruction: The Way Love Feels Is Always Only Approximate.

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

A Language Is Everything You Do.

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.

The Past Is A Closed Door.

This Above All, To Refuse To Be A Victim.

For If The World Treats You Well, Sir, You Come To Believe You Are Deserving Of It.

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

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

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

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

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

Jimmy Found Himself Wishing To Make A Dent In Crake, Get A Reaction; It Was One Of His Weaknesses, To Care What Other People Thought Of Him.

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.

Paper Isn’t Important. It’s The Words On Them That Are Important.

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.

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

Without A Trace

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.

... All This Talking, This Rather Liquid Confessing, Was Something I Didn't Think I Could Ever Bring Myself To Do. It Seemed Foolhardy To Me, Like An Uncooked Egg Deciding To To Come Out Of Its Shell: There Would Be A Risk Of Spreading Out Too Far, Turning Into A Formless Puddle.

I Was Once A Graduate Student In Victorian Literature, And I Believe As The Victorian Novelists Did, That A Novel Isn't Simply A Vehicle For Private Expression, But That It Also Exists For Social Examination. I Firmly Believe This.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

I Have Never Had Any Problems With Editors Who Wanted Me To Change My Methods Or Point Of View. I Pay A Lot Of Attention To Editors, But In A Different Way. They Sometimes Catch Mistakes And Help With The Order Of Poems In A Book. I Do Not Underestimate Them! Indeed, I Have Been One Myself.

We Have Begun To Slam Doors, And To Throw Things. I Throw My Purse, An Ashtray, A Package Of Chocolate Chips, Which Breaks On Impact. We Are Picking Up Chocolate Chips For Days. Jon Throws A Glass Of Milk, The Milk, Not The Glass: He Knows His Own Strength, As I Do Not. He Throws A Box Of Cheerios, Unopened. The Things I Throw Miss, Although They Are Worse Things. The Things He Throws Hit, But Are Harmless. I Begin To See How The Line Is Crossed, Between Histrionics And Murder.

What Is The Real Breath Of A Man — The Breathing Out Or The Breathing In?

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

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.

If One Of The Arguments Against Eating Meat Is To Do With Cruelty And Animal Intelligence, Then Lab Meat Avoids That. There's Also The Environmental Argument For It.

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

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.

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

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.

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

People Use Technology Only To Mean Digital Technology. Technology Is Actually Everything We Make.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Don't Wait Until You're 'in The Mood.' Get Into The Mood By Writing.

Our Generation In The West Was Lucky: We Had Readymade Gateways. We Had Books, Paper, Teachers, Schools And Libraries. But Many In The World Lack These Luxuries. How Do You Practice Without Such Tryout Venues?

It Wasn't So Easy Though, Ending The War. A War Is A Huge Fire; The Ashes From It Drift Far, And Settle Slowly.

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

I Tried For The Longest Time To Find Out What Deconstructionism Was. Nobody Was Able To Explain It To Me Clearly. The Best Answer I Got Was From A Writer, Who Said, 'honey, It's Bad News For You And Me.

Reality Simply Consists Of Different Points Of View.

Fiction Is Not Necessarily About What You Know, It's About How You Feel. That Is The Truth About Fiction, And The Other Truth Is That All Science Is A Tool, And We Use Our Tools Not To Actualise What We Know, But To Implement How We Feel.

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

There Is No Fool Like An Educated Fool.

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

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

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

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

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.

Something Is Unfolding, Being Revealed To Me. I See That There's A Whole World Of Of Girls And Their Doings That Has Been Unknown To Me, And That I Can Be Part Of Without Making Any Effort At All. I Don't Have To Keep Up With Anyone, Run As Fast, Aim As Well, Make Loud Explosive Noises, Decode Messages, Die On Cue. I Don't Have To Think About Whether I Do These Things Well, As Well As A Boy. All I Have To Do Is Sit On The Floor And Cut Frying Pans Our Of The Eaton's Catalogue With Embroidery Scissors, And Say I've Done It Badly.

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

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.

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!

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.

But Nothing Is More Opaque Than Absolute Transparency.

The Bell That Measures Time Is Ringing

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.

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.

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.

Religions In General Have To Rediscover Their Roots. In Hinduism And The Koran, Animals Are Described As Equals. If You Walk Into A Cathedral And Look At The Decorations Of Early Christianity, There Are Vines, Animals, Creatures And Birds Thriving All Over The Stonework.

Before The Civil War, Canada Was At The Top Of The Underground Railroad. If You Made It Into Canada, You Were Safe Unless Someone Came And Hauled You Back. That Was Also True During The Vietnam War For Draft Resisters.

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.

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.

Soon It Will Be Daybreak. Soon The Day Will Break. I Can't Stop It From Breaking In The Same Way It Always Does, And Then From Lying There Broken; Always The Same Day, Which Comes Around Again Like Clockwork. It Begins With The Day Before The Day Before, And Then The Day Before, And Then It's The Day Itself. A Saturday. The Breaking Day. The Day The Butcher Comes.

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.

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

Keeping Secrets

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

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

She Who Pays The Undertaker Calls The Tune.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down.

I Was Kidnapped By Literature At A Young Age And Never Wanted To Be Ransomed.

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

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

What’s With Her?” Says The Painter. “she’s Mad Because She’s A Woman,” Jon Says. This Is Something I Haven’t Heard For Years, Not Since High School. Once It Was A Shaming Thing To Say, And Crushing To Have It Said About You, By A Man. It Implied Oddness, Deformity, Sexual Malfunction. I Go To The Living Room Doorway. “i’m Not Mad Because I’m A Woman,” I Say. “i’m Mad Because You’re An Asshole.

Hunger Is A Powerful Reorganizer Of The Conscience.

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

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

Powerlessness And Silence Go Together.

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.

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.

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

History, As I Recall, Was Never This Winsome, And Especially Not This Clean, But The Real Thing Would Never Sell: Most People Prefer A Past In Which Nothing Smells.

When A Man Is Attacked In Print, It's Usually For Saying What He Says; When A Woman Is Attacked In Print, It's Often For Being Who She Is.

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.

My Favorite Author's Question Of All Time - Because It's So Simple To Answer ... 'is Your Hair Really Like That, Or Do You Get It Done?

Publishing A Book Is Like Stuffing A Note Into A Bottle And Hurling It Into The Sea.

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.

Once A Month I Wake In The Night, Slippery With Terror. I'm Afraid, Not Because There's Someone In The Room, In The Dark, In The Bed, But Because There Isn't. I'm Afraid Of The Emptiness, Which Lies Beside Me Like A Corpse.

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

Love's Never A Fair Trade.

Don't Eat Anything You Aren't Prepared To Kill. Don't Kill Anything You Aren't Prepared To Eat.

It Had Helped To Keep Her Sane, That Writing. Then, When Time Had Begun Again And Real People Had Entered It, She'd Abandoned It Here. Now It's A Whisper From The Past. Is That What Writing Amounts To? The Voice Your Ghost Would Have, If It Had A Voice?

I Suppose These Deadlines We Set For Ourselves Are Really A Way Of Saying We Appreciate Time, And Want To Use All Of It.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

All Fiction Is About People, Unless It's About Rabbits Pretending To Be People. It's All Essentially Characters In Action, Which Means Characters Moving Through Time And Changes Taking Place, And That's What We Call 'the Plot'.

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

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.

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 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.

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?

What I Need Is Perspective. The Illusion Of Depth, Created By A Frame, The Arrangement Of Shapes On A Flat Surface. Perspective Is Necessary. Otherwise There Are Only Two Dimensions. Otherwise You Live With Your Face Squashed Up Against A Wall, Everything A Huge Foreground, Of Details, Close-ups, Hairs, The Weave Of The Bedsheet, The Molecules Of The Face. Your Own Skin Like A Map, A Diagram Of Futility, Criscrossed With Tiny Roads That Lead Nowhere. Otherwise You Live In The Moment. Which Is Not Where I Want To Be.

I Feel Like The Word Shatter.

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

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

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.

Things Written Down Can Cause A Great Deal Of Harm. All Too Often, People Don't Consider That.

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

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

I No Longer Feel I'll Be Dead By Thirty; Now It's Sixty. I Suppose These Deadlines We Set For Ourselves Are Really A Way Of Saying We Appreciate Time, And Want To Use All Of It. I'm Still Writing, I'm Still Writing Poetry, I Still Can't Explain Why, And I'm Still Running Out Of Time.

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.

Writing Poetry Is A State Of Free Float.

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

Stupidity Is The Same As Evil If You Judge By The Results.

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

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

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.

About No Subject Are Poets Tempted To Lie So Much As About Their Own Lives.

Messy Love Is Better Than None, I Guess. I Am No Authority On Sane Living.

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.

It's Evening, One Of Those Gray Water-color Washes, Like Liquid Dust.

And Yet It Disturbs Me To Learn I Have Hurt Someone Unintentionally. I Want All My Hurts To Be Intentional.

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

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

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.

Our Biggest Moral Debt Is To The Environment. Take-take-take, Nothing Given Back.

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

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

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

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

Creating Some God For One's Inspirations Was Always A Good Way To Avoid Accusations Of Pride Should The Scheme Succeed, As Well As The Blame If Did Not.

The Threat To The Planet Is Us. It's Actually Not A Threat To The Planet - It's A Threat To Us.

I Have Been Known To Buy E-versions Of My Books Because I Was In A Hotel Room And I Needed One Right Away To Look Up Something In It; Very Handy For That - You Can Have It Just The Next Minute; You Can Press The Button And Just Have It.

There May Not Be One Truth - There May Be Several Truths - But Saying That Is Not To Say That Reality Doesn't Exist.

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.

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

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

One And One And One And One Doesn't Equal Four. Each One Remains Unique, There Is No Way Of Joining Them Together. They Cannot Be Exchanged, One For The Other. They Cannot Replace Each Other.

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.

Under The Old System - Which Is Now So Archaic That A Lot Of People Can't Remember It - If You Wanted Money You Had To Go To The Bank And Take The Money Out In Cash Form, And You Couldn't Take Out Money That You Didn't Have. But With The Credit Card You Can Spend Money You Don't Have, And That Is Just So Tempting.

You Meet The Same People On The Way Down That You Meet On The Way Up, But You're Going The Other Way.

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.

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.

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

There Is More Than One Kind Of Freedom," Said Aunt Lydia. "freedom To And Freedom From. In The Days Of Anarchy, It Was Freedom To. Now You Are Being Given Freedom From. Don't Underrate It.

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

Menopause. A Pause While You Reconsider Men.

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.

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.

I'm A Person Of Whim, And Easily Distracted. I Don't Like Multitasking. When I'm Doing One Thing, I Like To Do Just That Thing.

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.

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.

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

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.

In My Dreams Of This City I Am Always Lost.

One Good Maxim To Keep In Mind, And I Can't Remember Who Said It, "you Meet The Same People On The Way Down That You Meet On The Way Up, But You're Going The Other Way."

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.

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

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

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.

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

I Began To Forget Myself In The Middle Of Sentences.

Trending Author

Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Category