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It's True That There Is A Rescue Thing In People, And Not Just Rescuing The Family, Which Is Kind Of Obvious From A Biological Point Of View. But Why Is It That Some People Will Jump Into A Freezing River And Swim Out To A Downed Plane For Total Strangers? What Is That About? And It Seems To Be That It's Part Of Your Concept Of Who You Are. That's Why Some People Run Into The Burning Buildings, Because If They Don't, Their Concept Of Who They Are Will Be Violated. They Wouldn't Be Who They Thought They Were.

-Margaret Atwood

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It's True That There

Margaret Atwood

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It's True That There Is A Rescue Thing In People, And Not Just Rescuing The Family, Which Is Kind Of Obvious From A Biological Point Of View. But Why Is It That Some People Will Jump Into A Freezing River And Swim Out To A Downed Plane For Total Strangers? What Is That About? And It Seems To Be That It's Part Of Your Concept Of Who You Are. That's Why Some People Run Into The Burning Buildings, Because If They Don't, Their Concept Of Who They Are Will Be Violated. They Wouldn't Be Who They Thought They Were.

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The Temptation Is To Stay Inside; To Subside Into The Kind Of Recluse Whom Neighborhood Children Regard With Derision And Little Awe; To Let The Hedges And Weeds Grow Up, To Allow The Doors To Rust Shut, To Lie On My Bed In Some Gown-shaped Garment And Let My Hair Lengthens And Spread Out Over The Pillow And My Fingernails To Sprout Into Claws, While Candle Wax Drips Onto The Carpet. But Long Ago I Made A Choice Between Classicism And Romanticism. I Prefer To Be Upright And Contained—an Urn In Daylight.

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.

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

The Internet Is 95 Percent Porn And Spam

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

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.

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

You Can Think Clearly Only With Your Clothes On.

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

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.

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.

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.

Keep An Eye On The Weather, Which Is Changing Faster Than Predicted, And On The New Diseases Escaping Or Being Made, Even As We Speak. It's A Race Between New Tech And Biosphere Bankruptcy, I'd Say.

There's Blood, A Taste I Remember. It Tastes Of Orange Popsicles, Penny Gumballs, Red Licorice, Gnawed Hair, Dirty Ice.

Debt Is Part Of The Human Condition. Civilization Is Based On Exchanges - On Gifts, Trades, Loans - And The Revenges And Insults That Come When They Are Not Paid Back.

When Any Civilization Is Dust And Ashes," He Said, "art Is All That's Left Over. Images, Words, Music. Imaginative Structures. Meaning—human Meaning, That Is—is Defined By Them. You Have To Admit That.

Menopause. A Pause While You Reconsider Men.

We Understand More Than We Know.

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

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

Money As Such Is, As Oscar Wilde Said, Perfectly Useless. You Can't Eat It, Drink It, Shelter Yourself From The Cold With It, Wear It, Or Make Love With It Unless Deeply Disturbed. In And Of Itself, It Has No Emotions, No Mind, And No Conscience. It Doesn't Put Out Flowers Or Have Children, And It Makes A Lousy Pet. It Has Meaning Only When It Circulates, And Is Exchanged For Other Things; And Money Doesn't Do That For Itself. People Do That, Using Money As A Symbolic Token.

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

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

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.

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

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

Science Is A Tool, And We Invent Tools To Do Things We Want. It's A Question Of How Those Tools Are Used By People.

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.

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

Science Never Makes Things That Do Not Have To Do With What We Feel, By Which I Mean What We Want And What We Fear.

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.

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

You Can Wipe Your Feet On Me, Twist My Motives Around All You Like, You Can Dump Millstones On My Head And Drown Me In The River, But You Can’t Get Me Out Of The Story. I’m The Plot, Babe, And Don’t Ever Forget It.

Heroes Need Monsters To Establish Their Heroic Credentials. You Need Something Scary To Overcome.

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

She Who Pays The Undertaker Calls The Tune.

What You Get Is No Longer What You See.

What We Share May Be A Lot Like A Traffic Accident But We Get One Another. We Are Survivors Of Each Other. We Have Been Shark To One Another, But Also Lifeboat. That Counts For Something.

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

This Above All, To Refuse To Be A Victim.

... 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.

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.

Those Walls And Bars Are There For A Reason,” Said Crake. “not To Keep Us Out, But To Keep Them In. Mankind Needs Barriers In Both Cases.” “them?” “nature And God.” “i Thought You Didn’t Believe In God,” Said Jimmy. “i Don’t Believe In Nature Either,” Said Crake. “or Not With A Capital N.

The Scroll Is Coming Back (twitter Is A Scroll.)

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

Choice Of Evils Debates Always Produce Extremism - People Choose What They Hope Is The Lesser Evil, Then Call It Good And Demonize The Other Choice. It Will Be A Challenge For Your Generation To Synthesize - To Move Beyond Us Versus Them, To We.

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

The Male Frog In Mating Season," Said Crake, "makes As Much Noise As It Can. The Females Are Attracted To The Male Frog With The Biggest, Deepest Voice Because It Suggests A More Powerful Frog, One With Superior Genes. Small Male Frogs—it's Been Documented—discover If They Position Themselves In Empty Drainpipes, The Pipe Acts As A Voice Amplifier And The Small Frog Appears Much Larger Than It Really Is." So?" So That's What Art Is For The Artist, An Empty Drainpipe. An Amplifier. A Stab At Getting Laid.

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.

Confronted By Too Much Emptiness ... The Brain Invents. Loneliness Creates Company As Thirst Creates Water. How Many Sailors Have Been Wrecked In Pursuit Of Islands That Were Merely A Shimmering?

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.

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.

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.

Vampires Get The Joy Of Flying Around And Living Forever, Werewolves Get The Joy Of Animal Spirits. But Zombies, They're Not Rich, Or Aristocratic, They Shuffle Around. They're A Group Phenomenon, They're Not Very Fast, They're Quite Sickly. So What's The Pleasure Of Being One?

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

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.

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.

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.

You Think I'm Not A Goddess? Try Me. This Is A Torch Song. Touch Me And You'll Burn.

Why Are You So Interested In Amoebas?" "oh, They're Immortal," He Said, "and Sort Of Shapeless And Flexible. Being A Person Is Getting Too Complicated.

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.

There Are Some Virtues To Not Saying What You Think All The Time.

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.

Oil Paints...the Look Of Licked Lips.

You Can Pretty Much Trace When The Big Individual Indebtedness Kicked In, And It Was When The Credit Card Became Generally Available.

Whatever Is Silenced Will Clamor To Be Heard, Though Silently.

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.

Things Might Have Been Different If She Hadn't Been Able To Drift; If She'd Had To Concentrate On Her Next Meal, Instead Of Dwelling On All The Injuries She Felt We'd Done Her. An Unearned Income Encourages Self-pity In Those Already Prone To It.

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

Why Aren't We Investing More In Alternate Tech? The Saudi Arabians Are, Scottish Power Is. I Was Just There. Could It Be That We're Counting On The Oil Going On Forever And Ever And Ever And Us Having All Of It And Getting Very Rich?

In My Dreams Of This City I Am Always Lost.

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

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.

Life's Not Fair; Why Should I Be?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 Exist In Two Places, Here And Where You Are.

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.

I'm From The Generation That Had The Boys' Door And The Girls' Door When You Went To School, And You Got In Big Trouble If You Went In The Wrong One.

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.

By Telling You Anything At All I'm At Least Believing In You, 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. So I Will Go On. So I Will Myself To Go On.

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.

Happy As A Clam, Is What My Mother Says For Happy. I Am Happy As A Clam: Hard-shelled, Firmly Closed.

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

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.

He Has Been Trying To Sing Love Into Existence Again And He Has Failed

It Isn't Chic For Women To Be Drunk. Men Drunks Are More Excusable, More Easily Absolved, But Why? It Must Be Thought They Have Better Reasons.

How Furious She Must Be, Now That She's Been Taken At Her Word.

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.

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.

The Newspaper Journalists Like To Believe The Worst; They Can Sell More Papers That Way, As One Of Them Told Me Himself; For Even Upstanding And Respectable People Dearly Love To Read Ill Of Others.

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.

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

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.

We Shouldn't Have Been So Scornful; We Should Have Had Compassion. But Compassion Takes Work, And We Were Young.

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

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.

There's Something Final About Saying You Were Married Once. It's Like Saying You Were Dead Once. It Shuts Them Up.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

She Imagines Him Imagining Her. This Is Her Salvation. In Spirit She Walks The City, Traces Its Labyrinths, Its Dingy Mazes: Each Assignation, Each Rendezvous, Each Door And Stair And Bed. What He Said, What She Said, What They Did, What They Did Then. Even The Times They Argued, Fought, Parted, Agonized, Rejoined. How They’d Loved To Cut Themselves On Each Other, Taste Their Own Blood. We Were Ruinous Together, She Thinks. But How Else Can We Live, These Days, Except In The Midst Of Ruin?

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.

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

So Crake Never Remembered His Dreams. It's Snowman That Remembers Them Instead. Worse Than Remembers: He's Immersed In Them, He'd Wading Through Them, He's Stuck In Them. Every Moment He's Lived In The Past Few Months Was Dreamed First By Crake. No Wonder Crake Screamed So Much.

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.

Our Biggest Technology That We Ever, Ever Invented Was Articulated Language With Built-out Grammar. It Is That That Allows Us To Imagine Things Far In The Future And Things Way Back In The Past.

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

Faith Is Only A Word, Embroidered.

When I Am Writing Fiction, I Believe I Am Much Better Organized, More Methodical - One Has To Be When Writing A Novel. Writing Poetry Is A State Of Free Float.

A Handful Of Crumpled Stars

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

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

Madness Is Only An Amplification Of What You Already Are.

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

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

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.

All Creatures Know That Some Must Die That All The Rest May Take And Eat; Sooner Or Later, All Transform Their Blood To Wine, Their Flesh To Meat. But Man Alone Seeks Vengefulness, And Writes His Abstract Laws On Stone; For This False Justice He Has Made, He Tortures Limb And Crushes Bone. Is This The Image Of A God? My Tooth For Yours, Your Eye For Mine? Oh, If Revenge Did Move The Stars Instead Of Love, They Would Not Shine.

Expectation Isn't The Same As Desire

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

I'm A Novelist, And Idle Speculation Is What Novelists Do. How Odd To Spend One's Life Trying To Pretend That Non-existent People Are Real: Though No Odder, I Suppose, Than What Government Bureaucrats Do, Which Is Trying To Pretend That Real People Are Non-existent.

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

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.

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

I Was Unfair To Him, Of Course, But Where Would I Have Been Without Unfairness? In Thrall, In Harness. Young Women Need Unfairness, It's One Of Their Few Defenses. They Need Their Callousness, They Need Their Ignorance. They Walk In The Dark, Along The Edges Of High Cliffs, Humming To Themselves, Thinking Themselves Invulnerable.

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

Here And There Are Worms, Evidence Of The Fertility Of The Soil, Caught By The Sun, Half Dead; Flexible And Pink, Like Lips.

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

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.

When Women Let Their Hair Down, It Means Either Sexiness Or Craziness Or Death, The Three By Victorian Times Having Become Virtually Synonymous.

In His Student Days, He Used To Argue That If A Woman Has No Other Course Open To Her But Starvation, Prostitution, Or Throwing Herself From A Bridge, Then Surely The Prostitute, Who Has Shown The Most Tenacious Instinct For Self-preservation, Should Be Considered Stronger And Saner Than Her Frailer And No Longer Living Sisters. One Couldn't Have It Both Ways, He'd Pointed Out: If Women Are Seduced And Abandoned They're Supposed To Go Mad, But If They Survive, And Seduce In Their Turn, Then They Were Mad To Begin With.

All You Have To Do, I Tell Myself, Is Keep Your Mouth Shut And Look Stupid. It Shouldn't Be That Hard.

I've Been Involved In Activities With Other People Who Were Put In Jail. We Were Protesting The Closing Of The Prison Farm Program At The Prison I Used In A Previous Book, Alias Grace. Some Of Us Also Put Up Money In Order To Save The Heirloom Herd Of Cows There. So I Own Half A Cow!

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.

Reality Simply Consists Of Different Points Of View.

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

He Doesn't Know Which Is Worse, A Past He Can't Regain Or A Present That Will Destroy Him If He Looks At It Too Clearly. Then There's The Future. Sheer Vertigo.

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

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

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'.

A Suicide Is Both A Rebuke To The Living And A Puzzle That Defies Them To Solve It. Like A Poem, Suicide Is Finished And Refuses To Answer Questions As To Its Final Cause.

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

Farewells Can Be Shattering, But Returns Are Surely Worse. Solid Flesh Can Never Live Up To The Bright Shadow Cast By Its Absence. Time And Distance Blur The Edges; Then Suddenly The Beloved Has Arrived, And It's Noon With Its Merciless Light, And Every Spot And Pore And Wrinkle And Bristle Stands Clear.

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.

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

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

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

Glenn Used To Say The Reason You Can't Really Imagine Yourself Being Dead Was That As Soon As You Say, 'i'll Be Dead,' You've Said The Word I, And So You're Still Alive Inside The Sentence. And That's How People Got The Idea Of The Immortality Of The Soul - It Was A Consequence Of Grammar.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

You Shouldn't Do That," Said Laura. "you Could Set Yourself On Fire.

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

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.

Powerlessness And Silence Go Together.

I Have Always Known That There Were Spellbinding Evil Parts For Women. For One Thing, I Was Taken At An Early Age To See Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. Never Mind The Protestant Work Ethic Of The Dwarfs. Never Mind The Tedious Housework-is-virtuous Motif. Never Mind The Fact That Snow White Is A Vampire -- Anyone Who Lies In A Glass Coffin Without Decaying And Then Comes To Life Again Must Be. The Truth Is That I Was Paralysed By The Scene In Which The Evil Queen Drinks The Magic Potion And Changes Her Shape. What Power, What Untold Possibilities!

I'm Interested In The Gothic Novel Because It's Very Much A Woman's Form. Why Is There Such A Wide Readership For Books That Essentially Say, 'your Husband Is Trying To Kill You'?

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

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.

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

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.

My Father Was A Forest Entomologist, Which Means He Was Aware That Spraying Forests For Spruce Budworm Was Counterproductive In That It Didn't Really Work, And It Killed Everything Else In The Forests, And It Wasn't Good For The People Who Were Exposed To It, Either. So He Was An Early Proponent Of Not Doing That, But, Of Course, Nobody Listened.

The Biggest Debt Is Always The Government Debt; It's Always Debt That Government Has Run Up On Your Behalf.

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.

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.

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

Because You Are Never Here But Always There, I Forget Not You But What You Look Like You Drift Down The Street In The Rain, Your Face Dissolving, Changing Shape, The Colours Running Together My Walls Absorb You, Breathe You Forth Again, You Resume Yourself, I Do Not Recognize You You Rest On The Bed Watching Me Watching You, We Will Never Know Each Other Any Better Than We Do Now

We Slept In What Had Once Been The Gymnasium.

Myths Can't Be Translated As They Did In Their Ancient Soil. We Can Only Find Our Own Meaning In Our Own Time.

I Read A Piece By A Guy Out In Alberta That Said Canadians Are Lazy Because They're Not Patenting Enough New Inventions. I Disagree. Canadians Invent A Lot Of Stuff. Actually Patenting Them Is Expensive.

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

Today On The Way Home, It Snows. Big, Soft Caressing Flakes Fall Onto Our Skin Like Cold Moths; The Air Fills With Feathers.

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

I See That There Will Be No End To Imperfection, Or To Doing Things The Wrong Way. Even If You Grow Up, No Matter How Hard You Scrub, Whatever You Do, There Will Always Be Some Other Stain Or Spot On Your Face Or Stupid Act, Somebody Frowning.

Social Media Is Called Social Media For A Reason. It Lends Itself To Sharing Rather Than Horn-tooting.

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

I Enjoyed Teaching. I Liked The Students. Having To Formulate My Ideas About Literature Made Them Clearer. I Did Not Particularly Enjoy The More Bureaucratic Aspects Of The Job. However, If You Are Teaching Fervently, Your Energy And Time Are Used Up At A Great Rate.

I'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.

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

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

I Suppose It's Everyone's Fate To Be Reduced To Quaintness By Those Younger Than Themselves.

Blank Pages Inspire Me With Terror.

I Don't Want To Look At Something That Determines Me So Completely.

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.

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

Now That I Am Dead, I Know Everything.

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.

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