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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.

-Margaret Atwood

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Was This A Betrayal,

Margaret Atwood

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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.

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

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

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.

Stick A Shovel Into The Ground Almost Anywhere And Some Horrible Thing Or Other Will Come To Light. Good For Trade, We Thrive On Bones; Without Them There'd Be No Stories.

I Would Not Change [my Past Work] Anymore Than I Would Airbrush A Photo Of Myself.

But Nothing Is More Opaque Than Absolute Transparency.

In The End, We'll All Become Stories.

God Gave Unto The Animals A Wisdom Past Our Power To See: Each Knows Innately How To Live, Which We Must Learn Laboriously.

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

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.

We Understand More Than We Know.

Books Are Frozen Voices, In The Same Way That Musical Scores Are Frozen Music. The Score Is A Way Of Transmitting The Music To Someone Who Can Play It, Releasing It Into The Air Where It Can Once More Be Heard. And The Black Alphabet Marks On The Page Represent Words That Were Once Spoken, If Only In The Writer's Head. They Lie There Inert Until A Reader Comes Along And Transforms The Letters Into Living Sounds. The Reader Is The Musician Of The Book: Each Reader May Read The Same Text, Just As Each Violinist Plays The Same Piece, But Each Interpretation Is Different.

I Was Born In The Ottawa General Hospital Right After The Gray Cup Football Game In 1939. Six Months Later, I Was Backpacked Into The Quebec Bush. I Grew Up In And Out Of The Bush, In And Out Of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie And Toronto.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

This Is How The Girl Who Couldn't Speak And The Man Who Couldn't See Fell In Love.

When People In My Generation Started To Write, We Did Not Actually Have Much Of A Movie Industry, Much Of A Theater Scene, Much Of A Television Industry Or Other Creative Outlets. But We Had A Lot Of Aspiring Writers. All That Has Changed. We Now Have A Movie Industry, Television Industry And Lots Of Theater. But We Have Retained A Large Contingent Of Writers And A Dedicated Readership. The Larger Number Of People In Society Who Value Writing, The Larger Number Of Good Writers Will Be Produced. That's My Belief. It Raises The Bar.

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

My Good Intentions Are Completely Lethal.

Good Intentions

In View Of The Fading Animals The Proliferation Of Sewers And Fears The Sea Clogging, The Air Nearing Extinction We Should Be Kind, We Should Take Warning, We Should Forgive Each Other Instead We Are Opposite, We Touch As Though Attacking, The Gifts We Bring Even In Good Faith Maybe Warp In Our Hands To Implements, To Manoeuvres

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.

Writing Of The Narrative Kind, And Perhaps All Writing, Is Motivated Deep Down, By A Fear Or And Fascination With Mortality - By A Desire To Make The Risky Trip To The Underworld And To Bring Something Or Someone Back From The Dead.

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.

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

I Am Rather Saddened At The End Of A Book. I Think Most Writers Find This. It's Like A Friend Departing On A Voyage.

In My Dreams Of This City I Am Always Lost.

I Did Not Know How To Paint Or Even What To Paint, But I Knew I Had To Begin.

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

There's Nothing Like A Shovel Full Of Dirt To Encourage Literacy.

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.

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.

Love Is The Pursuit Of Shadows.

He’d Developed A Strangely Tender Feeling Towards Such Words, As If They Were Children Abandoned In The Woods And It Was His Duty To Rescue Them.

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.

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.

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

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