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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.

-Margaret Atwood

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That Was When They

Margaret Atwood

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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.

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

The Truth Is Seldom Welcome, Especially At Dinner.

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

Come Away With Me, He Said, We Will Live On A Desert Island. I Said, I Am A Desert Island. It Was Not What He Had In Mind.

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

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.

The Bell That Measures Time Is Ringing

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

I Stand On The Corner, Pretending I Am A Tree.

Some Cleric Putting A Match To Her. /neither Of Them Looks Happy About It. /once Lit, She'll Burn Like A Book, /like A Book That Was Ever Finished, /like A Locked-up Library.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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. We Put On Display Our Framed Photographs, Our Parchment Diplomas, Our Silver-plated Cups; We Monogram Our Linen, We Carve Our Names On Trees, We Scrawl Them On Washroom Walls. It's All The Same Impulse. What Do We Hope From It? Applause, Envy, Respect? Or Simply Attention, Of Any Kind We Can Get? 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.

The Proper Study Of Mankind Is Everything.

A Home Filled With Nothing But Yourself. It's Heavy, That Lightness. It's Crushing, That Emptiness.

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.

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.

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

When They're Gone Out Of His Head, These Words, They'll Be Gone, Everywhere, Forever. As If They Had Never Been.

Nature Full Strength Is More Than We Can Take, Adam One Used To Say. It's A Potent Hallucinogen, A Soporific, For The Untrained Soul. We're No Longer At Home In It. We Need To Dilute It. We Can't Drink It Straight. And God Is The Same. Too Much God And You Overdose. God Needs To Be Filtered.

Human Reason Is A Pin Dancing On The Head Of An Angel, So Small Is It In Comparison To The Divine Vastness That Encircles Us.

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

Love's Never A Fair Trade.

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.

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

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.

There Is Good And Mediocre Writing Within Every Genre.

I Feel Like Cotton Candy: Sugar And Air. Squeeze Me And I’d Turn Into A Small Sickly Damp Wad Of Weeping Pinky-red.

I Think Of Bad News As A Huge Bird, With The Wings Of A Crow And The Face Of My Grade Four School Teacher, Sparse Bun, Rancid Teeth, Wrinkly Frown, Pursed Mouth And All, Sailing Around The World Under Cover Of Darkness Pleased To Be The Bearer Of Ill Tidings, Carrying A Basket Of Rotten Eggs, And Knowing- As The Sun Comes Up- Exactly Where To Drop Them. On Me, For One.

If You Really Want To Stay The Same Age You Are Now Forever And Ever, She'd Be Thinking, Try Jumping Off The Roof: Death's A Sure-fire Method For Stopping Time.

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.

Time Rises And Rises, And When It Reaches The Level Of Your Eyes You Drown.

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

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

Nobody Quite Knows The Truth About Cats Purring, But It Does Seem To Be Also A Self-healing Thing For Them, Which Is Why, When You Take Your Cat To The Vet And It's Frightened, It Will Purr.

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.

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

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

The One Good Thing To Be Said About Announcing Yourself As A Writer In The Colonial Canadian Fifties Is That Nobody Told Me I Couldn't Do It Because I Was A Girl. They Simply Found The Entire Proposition Ridiculous. Writers Were Dead And English, Or Else Extremely Elderly And American; They Were Not Sixteen Years Old And Canadian.

By Telling You Anything At All I'm At Least Believing In You, I Believe You're There, I Believe You Into Being.

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

Menopause. A Pause While You Reconsider Men.

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

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 Don't Want To See Anyone. I Lie In The Bedroom With The Curtains Drawn And Nothingness Washing Over Me Like A Sluggish Wave. Whatever Is Happening To Me Is My Own Fault. I Have Done Something Wrong, Something So Huge I Can't Even See It, Something That's Drowning Me. I Am Inadequate And Stupid, Without Worth. I Might As Well Be Dead.

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

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.

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

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.

Human Understanding Is Fallible, And We See Through A Glass, Darkly. Any Religion Is A Shadow Of God. But The Shadows Of God Are Not God.

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

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?

Happiness Is A Garden Walled With Glass: There's No Way In Or Out.

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

Making Final Judgements About Poets, Cities Or Regions On The Basis Of An Anthology Is Always Dangerous: Anthologies Are Mirages Created, Finally, By Their Editors.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

But I Keep Going On With This Sad And Hungry And Sordid, This Limping And Mutilated Story, Because After All I Want You To Hear It, As I Will Hear Yours Too If I Ever Get The Chance, If I Meet You Or If You Escape, In The Future Or In Heaven Or In Prison Or Underground, Some Other Place. What They Have In Common Is That They're Not Here. By Telling You Anything At All I'm At Least Believing In You, I Believe You're There, I Believe You Into Being. Because I'm Telling You This Story I Will Your Existence. I Tell, Therefore You Are.

So Much Better To Travel Than To Arrive.

Poetry Is Where The Language Is Renewed.

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

In My Dreams Of This City I Am Always Lost.

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.

One Of The Gravestones In The Cemetery Near The Earliest Church Has An Anchor On It And An Hourglass, And The Words In Hope. In Hope. Why Did They Put That Above A Dead Person? Was It The Corpse Hoping, Or Those Still Alive?

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

Perhaps I Write For No One. Perhaps For The Same Person Children Are Writing For When They Scrawl Their Names In The Snow.

When You're Young, You Think Everything You Do Is Disposable. You Move From Now To Now, Crumpling Time Up In Your Hands, Tossing It Away. You're Your Own Speeding Car. You Think You Can Get Rid Of Things, And People Too—leave Them Behind. You Don't Yet Know About The Habit They Have, Of Coming Back. Time In Dreams Is Frozen. You Can Never Get Away From Where You've Been.

I'll Make You Mine, Lovers Said In Old Books. They Never Said, I'll Make You Me.

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

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

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

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

After Everything That's Happened, How Can The World Still Be So Beautiful? Because It Is.

You Can Never Read Your Own Book With The Innocent Anticipation That Comes With That First Delicious Page Of A New Book, Because You Wrote The Thing. You've Been Backstage. You've Seen How The Rabbits Were Smuggled Into The Hat. Therefore Ask A Reading Friend Or Two To Look At It Before You Give It To Anyone In The Publishing Business. This Friend Should Not Be Someone With Whom You Have A romantic Relationship, Unless You Want To Break Up.

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

To Live In Prison Is To Live Without Mirrors. To Live Without Mirrors Is To Live Without The Self. She Is Living Selflessly, She Finds A Hole In The Stone Wall And On The Other Side Of The Wall, A Voice. The Voice Comes Through Darkness And Has No Face. This Voice Becomes Her Mirror.

In Shakespeare Saved My Life, [author Laura Bates] Said She Got Better Papers From [prisoners] Than She Got From People In Her Regular Classes. Because She Was Teaching, Of Course, Macbeth, And A Number Of Them Had Murdered People. The Guy Who Wrote The Best Paper Said, "you Do Have This, 'is This A Dagger Which I See Before Me?' Before You Do It, But In My Case It Was A Gun."

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

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.

We Should Take A Lesson From The Irish Potato Famine: Monocultures Are Vulnerable. Monocultures Of Any Kind Are Very Vulnerable, Because One Change And You're Cooked. So We Should Be Diversifying, Wouldn't You Say?

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