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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.

-Margaret Atwood

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It's His Word Against

Margaret Atwood

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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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

Gardening Is Not A Rational Act. What Matters Is The Immersion Of The Hands In The Earth, That Ancient Ceremony Of Which The Pope Kissingthe Tarmac Is Merely A Pallid Vestigial Remnant.

Nobody Dies From Lack Of Sex. It's Lack Of Love We Die From.

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.

Our Problem Right Now Is That We're So Specialized That If The Lights Go Out, There Are A Huge Number Of People Who Are Not Going To Know What To Do. But Within Every Dystopia There's A Little Utopia.

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

I Think The Main Thing Is: Just Do It. Plunge In! Being Canadian, I Go Swimming In Icy Cold Lakes, And There Is Always That Dithering Moment. "am I Really Going To Do This? Won't It Hurt?" And At Some Point You Just Have To Flop In There And Scream. Once You're In, Keep Going. You May Have To Crumple And Toss, But We All Do That. Courage! I Think That Is What's Most Required.

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

[my Favorite Word Is] And. It Is So Hopeful.

Roughing It Builds A Boy's Character, But Only Certain Kinds Of Roughing It.

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

Why Do Men Feel Threatened By Women?

The Future Of Narrative? Built In, Part Of The Human Template. Not Going Away.

Why Is It We Want So Badly To Memorialize Ourselves? Even While We're Still Alive. We Wish To Assert Our Existence, Like Dogs Peeing On Fire Hydrants.

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.

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 Am Not Your Justification For Existence.

Maybe The Life I Think I'm Living Is A Paranoid Delusion...sanity Is A Valuable Possession; I Hoard It The Way People Once Hoarded Money. I Save It, So I Will Have Enough, When The Time Comes.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I Lie On The Floor, Washed By Nothing And Hanging On. I Cry At Night. I Am Afraid Of Hearing Voices, Or A Voice. I Have Come To The Edge, Of The Land. I Could Get Pushed Over.

There Is Good And Mediocre Writing Within Every Genre.

Faith Is Only A Word, Embroidered.

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

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.

I Wanted To Forget The Past, But It Refused To Forget Me; It Waited For Sleep, Then Cornered Me.

There's More Than One Way To Skin A Cat, My Father Used To Say; It Bothered Me, I Didn't See Why They Would Want To Skin A Cat Even One Way.

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

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.

We Love Each Other, That’s True Whatever It Means, But We Aren’t Good At It; For Some It’s A Talent, For Others Only An Addiction.

Mary Baker Eddy Is Said To Have Had A Phone Installed In Her Coffin Just In Case She Happened To Wake Up. I've Been Told That's An Urban Myth. Somebody Should Check It Out.

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

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

The Internet Is 95 Percent Porn And Spam

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

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

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.

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

The Weapons That Were Once Outside Sharpening Themselves On War Are Now Indoors There, In The Fortress, Fragile In Glass Cases; Why Is It (i'm Thinking Of The Careful Moulding Round The Stonework Archways) That In This Time, Such Elaborate Defences Keep Things That Are No Longer (much) Worth Defending?

We Slept In What Had Once Been The Gymnasium.

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.

Each Form Has Its Pluses And Its Minuses.

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

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.

Better Not To Invent Her In Her Absence. Better To Wait Until She's Actually Here. Then He Can Make Her Up As She Goes Along.

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.

When You're Unhinged, Things Make Their Way Out Of You That Should Be Kept Inside, And Other Things Get In That Ought To Be Shut Out. The Locks Lose Their Powers. The Guards Go To Sleep. The Passwords Fail.

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

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

We Shouldn't Be Saying 'save The Planet'; We Should Be Saying: 'save Viable Conditions In Which People Can Live.' That's What We're Dealing With Here.

It's Probably A Form Of Childish Curiosity That Keeps Me Going As A Fiction Writer. I ... Want To Open Everybody's Bureau Drawers And See What They Keep In There. I'm Nosy.

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

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.

I Want To Be Held And Told My Name. I Want To Be Valued, In Ways That I Am Not; I Want To Be More Than Valuable. I Repeat My Former Name; Remind Myself Of What I Once Could Do, How Others Saw Me. I Want To Steal Something.

Once In A While, Jimmy Would Make Up A Word But He Never Once Got Caught Out. ... He Should Have Been Pleased By His Success With These Verbal Fabrications, But Instead He Was Depressed By It. The Memos Telling Him He'd Done A Good Job Meant Nothing To Him; All They Proved Was That No One Was Capable Of Appreciating How Clever He Had Been. He Came To Understand Why Serial Killers Sent Helpful Clues To The Police.

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?

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.

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

A Ratio Of Failures Is Built Into The Process Of Writing. The Wastebasket Has Evolved For A Reason. Think Of It As The Altar Of The Muse Oblivion, To Whom You Sacrifice Your Botched First Drafts, The Tokens Of Your Human Imperfection.

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

Writers Are Much Better Behaved Nowadays, For A Couple Of Reasons. Once Upon A Time Nobody Was Thinking Of A Career, Unless You Lived In New York, So There Wasn't As Much Pressure To Present A Respectable Exterior. And Secondly, There Was No Social Media. So If You Were Found Face Down On The Floor - People Did Do That Quite A Bit; Usually Men, But Not Always - Or Fell Through Plate Glass Windows Or Got Into Scrapes, It Became A Rumor, And Rumors Are Hard To Pin Down.

Where There's A Doctor It's Always A Bad Sign. Even When They Are Not Doing The Killing Themselves It Means A Death Is Close, And In That Way They Are Like Ravens Or Crows.

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.

If We Were All On Trial For Our Thoughts, We Would All Be Hanged.

Amazing How The Heart Clutches At Anything Familiar, Whimpering Mine!mine!

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.

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.

You Can’t Buy It, But It Has A Price,” Said Oryx. “everything Has A Price.

You Will Always Have Partial Points Of View, And You'll Always Have The Story Behind The Story That Hasn't Come Out Yet. And Any Form Of Journalism You're Involved With Is Going To Be Up Against A Biased Viewpoint And Partial Knowledge.

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

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

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.

We Yearned For The Future. How Did We Learn It, That Talent For Insatiability?

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

Where Do The Words Go When We Have Said Them?

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

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.

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?

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

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.

Show Me A Character Totally Without Anxieties And I Will Show You A Boring Book.

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

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?

There's An Epigram Tacked To My Office Bulletin Board, Pinched From A Magazine -- "wanting To Meet An Author Because You Like His Work Is Like Wanting To Meet A Duck Because You Like Pâté.

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

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.

Why Does The Mind Do Such Things? Turn On Us, Rend Us, Dig The Claws In. If You Get Hungry Enough, They Say, You Start Eating Your Own Heart. Maybe It's Much The Same.

Marshall Mcluhan Is Absolutely Right, We Are Always Looking In The Rear View Mirror.

But The Adjectives Change,” Said Jimmy. “nothing’s Worse Than Last Year’s Adjectives.

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

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

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

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

Canadians Are Fond Of A Good Disaster, Especially If It Has Ice, Water, Or Snow In It. You Thought The National Flag Was About A Leaf, Didn't You? Look Harder. It's Where Someone Got Axed In The Snow.

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.

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

It's Only Afterwards That It Becomes Anything Like A Story At All. When You're Telling It, To Yourself Or To Someone Else.

Shattered Glass

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 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.

You Want The Truth, Of Course. You Want Me To Put Two And Two Together. But Two And Two Doesn’t Necessarily Get You The Truth. Two And Two Equals A Voice Outside The Window. Two And Two Equals The Wind. The Living Bird Is Not Its Labeled Bones.

But In The End, Back She Comes. There's No Use Resisting. She Goes To Him For Amnesia, For Oblivion. She Renders Herself Up, Is Blotted Out; Enters The Darkness Of Her Own Body, Forgets Her Name. Immolation Is What She Wants, However Briefly. To Exist Without Boundaries.

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.

As With All Knowledge, Once You Knew It, You Couldn't Imagine How It Was That You Hadn't Known It Before.

It's Very Hard For Students Not To Be In Debt Unless They've Got Big Scholarships Or Rich Parents. And It's Called Investing In Your Future, But Like Any Investment It's Risky Because Your Future Is An Unknown Quantity. However, If You Don't Invest In Your Future, You May Be Flipping Hamburgers For The Rest Of Your Life. So It's A Real Dilemma.

I Read For Pleasure And That Is The Moment I Learn The Most.

Expectation Isn't The Same As Desire

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

At The Very Least We Want A Witness. We Can't Stand The Idea Of Our Own Voices Falling Silent Finally, Like A Radio Running Down.

A Language Is Everything You Do.

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.

You Cannot Teach Somebody To Write A Masterpiece, But You Can Certainly Teach Them How To Improve Their Writing Skills. And You Can Teach Them That They Can Make Their Own Voices More Effective By Being Able To Communicate More Clearly And Forcefully. It Makes People Feel More Capable When They Can Write - For Instance To Make A Request - Of A Politician - And When They Are Able To Receive A Reply.

It Isn't Running Away They're Afraid Of. We Wouldn't Get Far. It's Those Other Escapes, The Ones You Can Open In Yourself, Given A Cutting Edge.

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.

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.

Karen Wasn't Hard, She Was Soft, Too Soft. A Soft Touch. Her Hair Was Soft, Her Smile Was Soft, Her Voice Was Soft. She Was So Soft There Was No Resistance. Hard Things Sank Into Her, They Went Right Through Her, And If She Made A Real Effort, Out The Other Side. Then She Didn't Have To See Them Or Hear Them, Or Even Touch Them.

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

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

A Reader Can Never Tell If It's A Real Thimble Or An Imaginary Thimble, Because By The Time You're Reading It, They're The Same. It's A Thimble. It's In The Book.

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.

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.

Science And Fiction Both Begin With Similar Questions: What If? Why? How Does It All Work? But They Focus On Different Areas Of Life On Earth.

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

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?

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

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

If He Wants To Be An Asshole, It's A Free Country. Millions Before Him Have Made The Same Life Choice.

Short Forms Are Returning Online. Interactivity Is Coming Back; It Was Always There In Oral Storytelling.

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.

As God Contains All Good Things, He Must Also Contain A Sense Of Playfulness -- A Gift He Has Shared With Creatures Other Than Ourselves, As Witness The Tricks Crows Play, And The Sportiveness Of Squirrels, And The Frolicking Of Kittens.

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

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

But People Will Do Anything Rather Than Admit That Their Lives Have No Meaning. No Use, That Is. No Plot.

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.

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 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.

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

Oil Paints...the Look Of Licked Lips.

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.

I Never Have [suffered Writer’s Block], Although I’ve Had Books That Didn’t Work Out. I Had To Stop Writing Them. I Just Abandoned Them. It Was Depressing, But It Wasn’t The End Of The World. When It Really Isn’t Working, And You’ve Been Bashing Yourself Against The Wall, It’s Kind Of A Relief. I Mean, Sometimes You Bash Yourself Against The Wall And You Get Through It. But Sometimes The Wall Is Just A Wall. There’s Nothing To Be Done But Go Somewhere Else.

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.

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

My Good Intentions Are Completely Lethal.

Good Intentions

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

An Eye For An Eye Only Leads To More Blindness.

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

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.

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

Touch Comes Before Sight, Before Speech. It Is The First Language And The Last, And It Always Tells The Truth.

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

Was This A Betrayal, Or Was It An Act Of Courage? Perhaps Both. Neither One Involves Forethought: Such Things Take Place In An Instant, In An Eyeblink. This Can Only Be Because They Have Been Rehearsed By Us Already, Over And Over, In Silence And Darkness; In Such Silence, Such Darkness, That We Are Ignorant Of Them Ourselves. Blind But Sure-footed, We Step Forward As If Into A Remembered Dance.

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.

I Thought Everyone Would Be Familiar With This Figure: If I'd Studied A Thing In School I Assumed It Was General Knowledge. I Hadn't Yet Discovered That I Lived In A Sort Of Transparent Balloon, Drifting Over The World Without Making Much Contact With It, And That The People I Knew Appeared To Me At A Different Angle From The One At Which They Appeared To Themselves; And That The Reverse Was Also True. I Was Smaller To Others, Up There In My Balloon, Than I Was To Myself. I Was Also Blurrier.

Just As If You Do A Mash-up Of Reality From The Point Of View Of African Americans In This Country, You're Going To End Up With Something That Will Say, "this Is Black Lives Matter." It's Not That People Necessarily Have Started Out From That Premise. But If You're Looking At Reality, That Will Be The Result Because That Is Reality.

Women Are Human Beings, And Human Beings Are A Very Mixed Lot. I've Always Been Against The Idea That Women Were Victorian Angels, That They Could Do No Wrong. I've Always Thought It Was Horseshit And Does Nobody Any Good. Remember, Lizzie Borden Got Off Largely Because The Cultural Agenda Had Convinced People That Women Were Morally Superior To Men, So Lizzie Borden Was "incapable" Of Taking The Ax And Giving Her Mother 40 Whacks.

Fatigue Is Here, In My Body, In My Legs And Eyes. That Is What Gets You In The End. Faith Is Only A Word, Embroidered.

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

Remember,' She'd Tell Her Staff, 'every Customer Wants To Feel Like A Princess, And Princesses Are Selfish And Overbearing.

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

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.

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

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

Gardening Is Not A Rational Act.

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.

Hunger Is A Powerful Reorganizer Of The Conscience.

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. There Are Others. The Scroll Is Coming Back (twitter Is A Scroll.) Short Forms Are Returning Online. Interactivity Is Coming Back; It Was Always There In Oral Storytelling. Each Form Has Its Pluses And Its Minuses.

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

How Shrunk, How Dwindled, In Our Times Creation's Mighty Seed - For Man Has Broke The Fellowship With Murder, Lust, And Greed.

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.

The Truth, It Seems, Is Not Just What You Find When You Open A Door: It Is Itself A Door, Which The Poet Is Always On The Verge Of Going Through.

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.

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.

Most Mothers Worry When Their Daughters Reach Adolescence But I Was The Opposite. I Relaxed, I Sighed With Relief. Little Girls Are Cute And Small Only To Adults. To One Another They Are Not Cute. They Are Life Sized.

I Began To Forget Myself In The Middle Of Sentences.

Poetry Isn't Written From The Idea Down. It's Written From The Phrase, Line And Stanza Up, Which Is Different From What Your Teacher Taught You To Do In School.

As I Was Whizzing Around The United States On Yet Another Demented Book Tour, Getting Up At Four In The Morning To Catch Planes, Doing Two Cities A Day, Eating The Pringle Food Object Out Of The Mini-bar At Night As I Crawled Around On The Hotel Room Floor, Too Tired Even To Phone Room Service, I Thought, 'there Must Be A Better Way Of Doing This'.

Powerlessness And Silence Go Together.

We Thought We Were Running Away From The Grownups, And Now We Are The Grownups.

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

Great Literature

Though As He'd Say, What Is 'belief' But A Willingness To Suspend The Negatives?

It Used To Be That Your Bloodlines Dictated Who You Were. But The U.s. Became The Land Of The Self-made Man, In Which Not Only Did You Make A Fortune But You Could Make Up Everything Else About Yourself As Well. You Move Into A New Town With A Spurious Pedigreed Background And You Just Make Yourself Up.

Screw Poetry, It’s You I Want, Your Taste, Rain On You, Mouth On Your Skin.

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

You Can't Help What You Feel, But You Can Help How You Behave

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