The Alcohol Smell Is On My Fingers, Cold And Remote, Piercing Like A Steel Pin Going In. It Smells Like White Enamel Basins. When I Look Up At The Stars In The Nighttime, Cold And White And Sharp, I Think They Must Smell Like That.

-Margaret Atwood

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The Alcohol Smell Is

Margaret Atwood

Topic

Stars

Thinking

White

More From Margaret Atwood

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?

War

Thinking

Glasses

In The First World War, People Would Be Receiving Letters From Loved Ones Who Had Been Dead For Weeks, And They Would Not Know Until That Black-bordered Telegram Arrived. I Remember, Of Course, When It Was Letters Only, Or The Telephone, And You Did Not Make Expensive Long-distance Calls Unless It Was, "come Home To The Funeral," Or The Like.

War

Distance

Home

Some Days I Do Appreciate Things More, Eggs, Flowers, But Then I Decide I'm Only Having An Attack Of Sentimentality, My Brain Going Pastel Technicolor, Like A Beautiful-sunset Greeting Cards They Used To Make So Many Of In California. High-gloss Hearts. The Danger Is Grayout.

Beautiful

Flower

Heart

Love Is The Pursuit Of Shadows.

Broken Heart

Love Is

Shadow

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.

Music

Song

Odd

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.

Monsters

Scrooge

Kind

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

Favorite Words

Hopeful

Your Favorite

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.

Mean

Want

Feels

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

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.

Book

Dragons

Vampire

Don't Misunderstand Me. I Am Not Scoffing At Goodness, Which Is Far More Difficult To Explain Than Evil, And Far More Complicated. But Sometimes It's Hard To Put Up With.

Evil

Sometimes

Complicated

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.

Dream

Mistake

Sunset

Potential Has A Shelf Life.

Shelves

Shelf Life

No Luck Was Dumb Because Luck Was Just Another Name For Miracle.

Names

Miracle

Dumb

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

Giving

Long

World

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.

Girl

Running

Cutting

Friendship Was Always Contingent.

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.

Editors

Cities

Judgement

Why Can't I Believe? She Asked The Darkness. Behind Her Eyelids She Saw An Animal. It Was Golden Colour, With Gentle Green Eyes And Canine Teeth, And Curly Wool Instead Of Fur. It Opened Its Mouth, But It Did Not Speak. Instead, It Yawned.it Gazed At Her. She Gazed At It. "you Are The Effect Of A Carefully Calibrated Blend Of Plant Toxins," She Told It.then She Fell Asleep.

Believe

Eye

Animal

Immortality,' Said Crake, ' Is A Concept. If You Take 'mortality' As Being, Not Death, But The Foreknowledge Of It And The Fear Of It, Then 'immortality' Is The Absence Of Such Fear. Babies Are Immortal. Edit Out The Fear, And You'll Be.

Baby

Absence

Immortality

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.

Silent

Used

Shelves

I Am Not A Saint Or A Cripple, I Am Not A Wound; Now I Will See Whether I Am A Coward.

Coward

Saint

Cripples

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

Philosophical

Giving

Desire

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?

Teacher

Book

School

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

Real

Men

Breathing

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

Mirrors

Views

Perspective

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.

Running

Dog

Wall

Even In The Tragedies, Shakespeare Always Put In Parts For The Comic Actors Because His Audience Was Mixed. He Puts In People Who Talk Like Aristocrats. He Puts In Idiots And Fools. He Puts In Certain Middle-range Characters. And When You Go To The Globe, You Realize How That All Works. The People Who Paid More Sat In Seats Around The Edge. Everybody Else Paid A Penny. They Put It Into A Tin Box - That's Why We Call It The "box Office." They Stood In The Pit, But They Were Very Close, So When Hamlet Was Doing His Soliloquy, It Was Addressed To You, The Audience - Right There.

Character

People

Office

But Most Hearts Say, I Want, I Want, I Want, I Want. My Heart Is More Duplicitous, Though No Twin As I Once Thought. It Says, I Want, I Don't Want, I Want, And Then A Pause. It Forces Me To Listen.

Heart

Want

Twins

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

Social

Novel

Vehicle

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

Space

Fiction

Planets

No More Photos. Surely There Are Enough. No More Shadows Of Myself Thrown By Light Onto Pieces Of Paper, Onto Squares Of Plastic. No More Of My Eyes, Mouths, Noses, Moods, Bad Angles. No More Yawns, Teeth, Wrinkles. I Suffer From My Own Multiplicity. Two Or Three Images Would Have Been Enough, Or Four, Or Five. That Would Have Allowed For A Firm Idea: This Is She. As It Is, I'm Watery, I Ripple, From Moment To Moment I Dissolve Into My Other Selves. Turn The Page: You, Looking, Are Newly Confused. You Know Me Too Well To Know Me. Or Not Too Well: Too Much.

Confused

Eye

Ideas

As All Historians Know, The Past Is A Great Darkness, And Filled With Echoes. Voices May Reach Us From It; But What They Say To Us Is Imbued With The Obscurity Of The Matrix Out Of Which They Come; And Try As We May, We Cannot Always Decipher Them Precisely In The Clearer Light Of Our Day.

Past

Echoes

Light

The Eskimos Had Fifty-two Names For Snow Because It Was Important To Them: There Ought To Be As Many For Love.

Love

Valentines Day

Names

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

Found

Dangerous

Difficult

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

Blood

White

Peaceful

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

Reality

May

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

Age

Literature

Young

I Write As If I've Lived A Lot Of Things I Haven't Lived.

Writing

Havens

Ifs

Expectation Isn't The Same As Desire

Expectations

Desire

Yelling Is A Form Of Publishing

Business

Yelling

Management

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.

Steps

Demon

Ends

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

Past

The Interesting Thing About The Religious Component, For Me, Is That Jesus Hardly Mentions Sex At All. He's Pretty Interested In The Poor, He's Pretty Interested In Selling Your Worldly Goods And Storing Up Riches In Heaven. However, Religious Fundamentalists Have Made It All About Sex, And That's Like Saying, "look At The Sex And We're Just Not Going To Talk About What You May Be Doing In A Financial Way That Is Sinful."

Religious

Jesus

Sex

I Have Long Since Decided If You Wait For The Perfect Time To Write, You'll Never Write. There Is No Time That Isn't Flawed Somehow.

Writing

Long

Perfect

My Brother And I Were Both Good At Science, And We Were Both Good At English Literature. Either One Of Us Could Have Gone Either Way.

Brother

Gone

Literature

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.

Eye

Greed

World

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

Writing

Perfect

Writers Block

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

Reality

Craziness

Frightening

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

Heart

Familiar

Clutch

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

Invisible

Made

Feels

There Is No Fool Like An Educated Fool.

Fool

Educated

Educated Fools

You Could Tell 'the Handmaid's Tale' From A Male Point Of View. People Have Mistakenly Felt That The Women Are Oppressed, But Power Tends To Organise Itself In A Pyramid. I Could Pick A Male Narrator From Somewhere In That Pyramid. It Would Interesting.

Views

Pyramids

People

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.

Thinking

Two

Hands

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.

Betrayal

Silence

Darkness

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.

Ignorance

Poetry

Dignity

A Non-event ... Is Better To Write About Than An Event, Because With A Non-event You Can Make Up The Meaning Yourself, It Means Whatever You Say It Means.

Writing

Mean

Events

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.

Dream

Moving

Thinking

Every Night When I Go To Bed I Think, In The Morning I Will Wake Up In My Own House And Things Will Be Back The Way They Were. It Hasn’t Happened This Morning, Either.

Morning

Night

Thinking

A Wave Of Blood Goes Up To My Head, My Stomach Shrinks Together, As If Something Dangerous Has Just Missed Hitting Me. It's As If I've Been Caught Stealing, Or Telling A Lie; Or As If I've Heard Other People Talking About Me, Saying Bad Things About Me, Behind My Back. There's The Same Flush Of Shame, Of Guilt And Terror, And Of Cold Disgust With Myself. But I Don't Know Where These Feelings Have Come From, What I've Done.

Lying

Blood

Talking

Faith Is Only A Word, Embroidered.

Kill What You Can't Save What You Can't Eat Throw Out What You Can't Throw Out Bury What You Can't Bury Give Away What You Can't Give Away You Must Carry With You, It Is Always Heavier Than You Thought.

Giving

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

God

Needs

Too Much

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

Train

Departing

The Internet Is 95 Percent Porn And Spam

Internet

Spam

Percent

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.

Writing

Thinking

Play

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.

Mistake

Thinking

Often Is

You're Never Going To Kill Storytelling, Because It's Built Into The Human Plan. We Come With It.

Storytelling

Plans

Storyteller

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.

Lying

Dark

Night

If I Were Going To Convert To Any Religion I Would Probably Choose Catholicism Because It At Least Has Female Saints And The Virgin Mary.

Female

Saint

Mary

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."

Teaching

Gun

Class

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

Hands

Two

Stones

My Brother And I Were Both Teenage Writers, And He Was, I Have To Say, Better Than I Was, But He Went Into Science, And I Went Into Writing.

Brother

Teenage

Writing

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.

Past

Helping

Don't Be Married To A Line Or Verse If It Can't Rhyme, Fit The Meter, Or Doesn't Fit The Outline.

Writing

Lines

Married

No One Knows What Cuases An Outer Landscape To Become An Inner One.

Landscape

Knows

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

Patience

Hands

Water

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.

Country

Reality

People

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'.

Morning

Book

Tired

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.

Real

Dark

Night

I'm A Fool, To Confuse This With Goodness. I Am Not Good. I Know Too Much To Be Good. I Know Myself. I Know Myself To Be Vengeful, Greedy, Secretive And Sly.

Too Much

Fool

Greedy

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.

Greatest Fear

People

Plot

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.

People

Tools

Want

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.

Father

Cat

Skins

Better Never Means Better For Everyone... It Always Means Worse, For Some.

Change

Mean

Handmaids Tale

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

Storytelling

Online

Coming Back

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.

Stories

Ifs

Anything That Suffers And Dies Instead Of Us Is Christ; If They Didn't Kill Birds And Fish They Would Have Killed Us. The Animals Die That We May Live, They Are Substitute People, Hunters In The Fall Killing The Deer, That Is Christ Also. And We Eat Them, Out Of Cans Or Otherwise; We Are Eaters Of Death, Dead Christ-flesh Resurrecting Inside Us, Granting Us Life. Canned Spam, Canned Jesus, Even The Plants Must Be Christ.

Jesus

Fall

Animal

Sooner Or Later, I Hate To Break It To You, You're Gonna Die, So How Do You Fill In The Space Between Here And There? It's Yours. Seize Your Space.

Hate

Space

Here And There

You Quickly Find, When You Are A Hand-reader As I Am, That Nothing Interests People So Much As Themselves.

Hands

People

Interest

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

Fall

Home

Air

Although From You I Far Must Roam, Do Not Be Broken Hearted. We Two, Who In The Souls Are One, Are Never Truly Parted.

Two

Broken

Soul

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

Fate

Romance

Luck

Plato Said That Poets Should Be Excluded From The Ideal Republic Because They Are Such Liars. I Am A Poet, And I Affirm That This Is True. About No Subject Are Poets Tempted To Lie So Much As About Their Own Lives; I Know One Of Them Who Has Floated At Least Five Versions Of His Autobiography, None Of Them True. I Of Course - Being Also A Novelist - Am A Much More Truthful Person Than That. But Since Poets Lie, How Can You Believe Me?

Plato

Liars

Lying

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'?

Husband

Book

Trying

Everyone Thinks Writers Must Know More About The Inside Of The Human Head, But That's Wrong. They Know Less, That's Why They Write. Trying To Find Out What Everyone Else Takes For Granted.

Writing

Thinking

Trying

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.

Past

Feet

Ice

Inside The Peach, There Is A Stone.

Peaches

Stones

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. The Painless Ones Go Around Putting Their Hands On Hot Stoves, Freezing Their Feet To The Point Of Gangrene, Scalding The Lining Of Their Throats With Boiling Coffee, Because There Is No Warning Anguish. Evolution Does Not Favour Them. So Too Perhaps With The Fearless Women, Because There Aren't Very Many Of Them Around. ... Providence Appears To Protect Such Women, Maybe Out Of Astonishment.

Pain

Fear

Coffee

As Human Beings, We Are Always Torn Between Individual Freedom And The Ability Of Choose Our Actions, And The Need For At Least Enough Social Structure So That Anarchy, Chaos, And Warlordery - Or The War Of All Against All - Can Be Avoided.

War

Needs

Our Actions

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.

Dream

Sunset

Shoes

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

Reading

Water Bottles

Comfort

Once You Publish A Book, It Is Out Of Your Control. You Cannot Dictate How People Read It.

Book

People

Publish

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

Artist

Lines

Dictatorship

This Afternoon Held That Special Quality Of Mournful Emptiness I've Connected With Late Sunday Afternoons Ever Since Childhood: The Feeling Of Having Nothing To Do.

Sunday

Childhood

Feelings

There's Always Something To Occupy The Inquiring Mind.

Mind

Inquiring Minds

Inquiring

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

Night

Light

Eggs

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.

Running

Cutting

Given

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

Time

Sea

Floats

Those Who Live Alone Slide Into The Habit Of Vertical Eating: Why Bother With The Niceties When There's No One To Share Or Censure? But Laxity In One Area May Lead To Derangement In All.

May

Slides

Eating

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.

Ignorance

Dark

Thinking

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

Nausea

Obsession

Supposed To Be

Life's Not Fair; Why Should I Be?

Fairness

Should

Fairs

Why Is It He Feels Some Line Has Been Crossed, Some Boundary Transgressed? How Much Is Too Much, How Far Is Too Far?

Lines

Too Much

Boundaries

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.

Country

Rights

Expression

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.

Sweet

Air

Sea

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

Taken

Handmaids Tale

Handmaids

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.

Real

Stories

Real Story

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.

War

Safe

Canada

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

Broken Heart

Lost Love

Divorce

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.

Real

Past

Smell

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

Country

Choices

Want

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

Country

Icons

Canada

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.

Aunt

May

Ordinary

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.

Children

Past

Grace

I Think Every Age Lives In A Blend Of Technology So There's Always Older Ones Mixed In With Newer Ones, And When The New Technology Goes Down, The Immediate Fallback Position Is Either That Technology Just Before That Or One Several Technologies Back.

Technology

Thinking

Age

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

Book

Reading

Heart

More Powerful Than God, More Evil Than The Devil; The Poor Have It, The Rich Lack It, And If You Eat It You Die?

Powerful

Evil

Rich

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

Toilets

Reassuring

Bodily Functions

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

Years

Adjectives

Lasts

She Knows The Rituals, She Knows How We're Supposed To Be Behaving...but I Think These Things Are Impenetrable And Fraudulent, And I Can't Do Them Without Feeling I'm Acting.

Thinking

Feelings

Acting

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

House

Purpose

Senile

Sons Branch Out, But One Woman Leads To Another.

Witty

Son

Branches

... Remember That Forgiveness Too Is A Power. To Beg For It Is A Power, And To Withold Or Bestow It Is A Power, Perhaps The Greatest.

Remember

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

Water

Stories

Odyssey

I Was Warped Early By Ray Bradbury And Edgar Allan Poe. I Was Very Fond Of Franz Kafka.

Rays

Allan Poe

Bradbury

And Sometimes It Happened, For A Time. That Kind Of Love Comes And Goes And Is Hard To Remember Afterwards, Like Pain. You Would Look At The Man One Day And You Would Think, I Loved You, And The Tense Would Be Past, And You Would Be Filled With A Sense Of Wonder, Because It Was Such An Amazing And Precarious And Dumb Thing To Have Done; And You Would Know Too Why Your Friends Have Been Evasive About It, At The Time.

Love

Pain

Past

If I Am Good Enough And Quiet Enough, Perhaps After All They Will Let Me Go; But It’s Not Easy Being Quiet And Good, It’s Like Hanging On To The Edge Of A Bridge When You’ve Already Fallen Over; You Don’t Seem To Be Moving, Just Dangling There, And Yet It Is Taking All Your Strength.

Moving

Bridges

Over You

Forgiving Men Is So Much Easier Than Forgiving Women.

Forgiveness

Women

Forgiving

I've Never Understood Why People Consider Youth A Time Of Freedom And Joy. It's Probably Because They Have Forgotten Their Own.

People

Joy

Understanding

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.

Time

Water

Looks

The Body Is So Easily Damaged, So Easily Disposed Of, Water And Chemicals Is All It Is, Hardly More To It Than A Jellyfish Drying On Sand.

Water

Body

Sand

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

Special

Males

Problem

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.

Games

Tree

Forever

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.

Spiritual

Mean

Facts

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

Children

Writing

Names

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.

Mean

Addiction

Talent

For Years I Wanted To Be Older, And Now I Am.

Inspirational

Years

Age

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.

Father

Mean

People

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.

Inspiration

Pride

Creating

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.

Suicide

Finals

Answers

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

Mean

Together

Stories

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.

Mean

Doctors

Ravens

Maybe Sadness Was A Kind Of Hunger, She Thought. Maybe The Two Went Together.

Sadness

Two

Together

I Define Science Fiction As Fiction In Which Things Happen That Are Not Possible Today - That Depend, For Instance, On Advanced Space Travel, Time Travel, The Discovery Of Green Monsters On Other Planets Or Galaxies, Or That Contain Various Technologies We Have Not Yet Developed.

Technology

Discovery

Space

Everybody Acts As If They Have Free Will. They Act As If They Can Make These Decisions; Do They Know They Don't? I Think There's Been Some Back-down On The Idea That Everything Is Determined.

Thinking

Ideas

Decision

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.

Home

Night

People

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

Coming Back

You Always Think, 'oh, If Only I Had A Little Chalet In The Mountains! How Great That Would Be And I'd Do All This Writing' Except, No, I Wouldn't. I'd Do The Same Amount Of Writing I Do Now And The Rest Of The Time I'd Go Stir Crazy. 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.

Crazy

Writing

Thinking

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.

Children

Growth

Doe

I Hope That People Will Finally Come To Realize That There Is Only One 'race' - The Human Race - And That We Are All Members Of It.

Equality

Race

People

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.

Good Night

Mean

Sleep

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.

Sharks

Survivor

May

You Can Mean More Than One. You Can Mean Thousands. I'm Not In Any Immediate Danger, I'll Say To You. I'll Pretend You Can Hear Me. But It's No Good, Because I Know You Can't.

Mean

Danger

Knows

This Above All, To Refuse To Be A Victim.

Victim

Refuse

In The Spring, At The End Of The Day, You Should Smell Like Dirt.

Nature

Spring

Garden

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!

Book

Order

Jail

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.

Growing Up

Stupid

Imperfection

Ignoring Isn’t The Same As Ignorance, You Have To Work At It.

Ignorance

Handmaids Tale

Handmaids

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

Dragons

Views

Long

Madness Is Only An Amplification Of What You Already Are.

Amplification

Madness

Canada Was Built On Dead Beavers.

Canada

Beavers

Built

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.

Shrines

Littles

Empty

War Is What Happens When Language Fails.

War

Empowering

Language

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.

Life

Truth

Real

In Theory I Can Do Almost Anything; Certainly I Have Been Told How. In Practice I Do As Little As Possible. I Pretend To Myself That I Would Be Quite Happy In A Hermit's Cave, Living On Gruel, If Someone Else Would Make The Gruel. Gruel, Like So Many Other Things, Is Beyond Me.

Practice

Littles

Would Be

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.

Writing

People

Politician

Things Musicals Taught Me: All Your Problems Will Go Away If You Sing About It.

Writing

Going Away

Taught

If A Stranger Taps You On The Ass And Says, "how's The Little Lady Today!" You Will Probably Cringe. But If He's An American, He's Only Being Friendly.

Friendly

Littles

Today

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

Beautiful

Believe

Past

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

Women

Mean

Hair

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

Helping

Feels

Behave

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.

Crush

School

Men

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

Children

Alive

Mouths

Powerlessness And Silence Go Together.

Silence

Together

Powerlessness

While He Writes, I Feel As If He Is Drawing Me; Or Not Drawing Me, Drawing On Me - Drawing On My Skin - Not With The Pencil He Is Using, But With An Old-fashioned Goose Pen, And Not With The Quill End But With The Feather End. As If Hundreds Of Butterflies Have Settled All Over My Face, And Are Softly Opening And Closing Their Wings.

Writing

Butterfly

Wings

You Say, The Sensed Absence Of God And The Sensed Presence Amount To Much The Same Thing, Only In Reverse.

Atheism

Absence

Reverse

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.

Men

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.

Believe

Writing

Fiction

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.

Depression

Lying

Stupid

What Else Can I Do? Once You've Gone This Far You Aren't Fit For Anything Else. Something Happens To Your Mind. You're Overqualified, Overspecialized, And Everybody Knows It. Nobody In Any Other Game Would Be Crazy Enough To Hire Me. I Wouldn't Even Make A Good Ditch-digger, I'd Start Tearing Apart The Sewer-system, Trying To Pick-axe And Unearth All Those Chthonic Symbols - Pipes, Valves, Cloacal Conduits... No, No. I'll Have To Be A Slave In The Paper-mines For All Time.

Crazy

Games

Mind

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

Soil

Ancient

Myth

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

Crush

Home

Emptiness

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

Borders

Stuff

Flow

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

People

Causes

Harm

You Can Wet The Rim Of A Glass And Run Your Finger Around The Rim And It Will Make A Sound. This Is What I Feel Like: This Sound Of Glass. I Feel Like The Word Shatter. I Want To Be With Someone.

Running

Glasses

Sound

Perhaps They Were Looking For Passion; Perhaps They Delved Into This Book As Into A Mysterious Parcel - A Gift Box At The Bottom Of Which, Hidden In Layers Of Rustling Tissue Paper, Lay Something They'd Always Longed For But Couldn't Ever Grasp.

Book

Passion

Tissue Paper

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?

Animal

Joy

Forever

Keep The Faith. Whatever That May Be. Don't Get Too Depressed Yet, Because I Have A Belief In America Being Very Diverse And Ornery, And Containing A Lot Of People Who Are Not Going To Roll Over Very Easily For A Totalitarian Dictatorship. That Is What I Think.

Thinking

People

Belief

Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.

2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.

2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.

2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.

3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.

3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.

3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.

4. Proper Usage of Quotes

4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.

4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.

4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

5. Common Mistakes to Avoid

5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.

5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.

5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.

6. Quotes in Different Contexts

6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.

6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.

6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.

7. Punctuation and Formatting

Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:

Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.

Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.

Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.

8. Ethical Considerations

Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes

Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.

Conclusion

Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.

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