Background Image

...

Well. Then We Had The Irises, Rising Beautiful And Cool On Their Tall Stalks, Like Blown Glass, Like Pastel Water Momentarily Frozen In A Splash, Light Blue, Light Mauve, And The Darker Ones, Velvet And Purple, Black Cat's Ears In The Sun, Indigo Shadow, And The Bleeding Hearts, So Female In Shape It Was A Surprise They'd Not Long Since Been Rooted Out. There Is Something Subversive About This Garden Of Serena's, A Sense Of Buried Things Bursting Upwards, Wordlessly, Into The Light, As If To Point, To Say: Whatever Is Silenced Will Clamor To Be Heard, Though Silently.

-Margaret Atwood

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Well. Then We Had

Margaret Atwood

...

Well. Then We Had The Irises, Rising Beautiful And Cool On Their Tall Stalks, Like Blown Glass, Like Pastel Water Momentarily Frozen In A Splash, Light Blue, Light Mauve, And The Darker Ones, Velvet And Purple, Black Cat's Ears In The Sun, Indigo Shadow, And The Bleeding Hearts, So Female In Shape It Was A Surprise They'd Not Long Since Been Rooted Out. There Is Something Subversive About This Garden Of Serena's, A Sense Of Buried Things Bursting Upwards, Wordlessly, Into The Light, As If To Point, To Say: Whatever Is Silenced Will Clamor To Be Heard, Though Silently.

Views: 60130

Topic

More From Margaret Atwood

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.

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.

Wars Happen Because The Ones Who Start Them Think They Can Win.

The Road To Death Is A Lonely Highway, And Longer Than It Apears, Even When It Leads Straight Down From The Scaffold, By Way Of A Rope; And It's A Dark Road, With Never Any Moon Shining On It, To Light Your Way.

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.

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.

Men And Women Are Not "equal" If "equal" Means "exactly The Same." Our Many Puzzlements And Indeed Unhappinesses Come From Trying To Figure Out What The Differences Really Mean, Or Should Mean, Or Should Not Mean.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Canada, At The Moment, Is Going Through A Lord Of The Rings Moment. Having Been A Lowly Hobbit With Furry Feet And Fun Parties, With Fireworks And Beer, It Has Now Been Handed The Ring Of Power: A Large Supply Of Fossil Fuel, In The Form Of Oil/tar Sand And Coal. Will It Shrivel Into An Evil Ringwraith? Will It Become An Addicted Golum? Will It Refuse The Ring, Like Galadriel, Fearful Of What So Much Power (in Both Senses Of The Word) Will Do To Its Inner Being? Will It Try To Deal With The Ring Responsibly, Like Gandalf? Will It Side With The Ents?

It Had Helped To Keep Her Sane, That Writing. Then, When Time Had Begun Again And Real People Had Entered It, She'd Abandoned It Here. Now It's A Whisper From The Past. Is That What Writing Amounts To? The Voice Your Ghost Would Have, If It Had A Voice?

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.

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.

Now I Can See How That Can Happen. You Can Fall In Love With Anybody--a Fool, A Criminal, A Nothing. There Are No Good Rules.

Falling In Love

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

Their Mothers Had Finally Caught Up To Them And Been Proven Right. There Were Consequences After All But They Were The Consequences To Things You Didn't Even Know You'd Done.

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

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

I Am Certain That A Sewing Machine Would Relieve As Much Human Suffering As A Hundred Lunatic Asylums, And Possibly A Good Deal More.

Lunatic Asylums

There Were No Men In This Painting, But It Was About Men, The Kind Who Caused Women To Fall. I Did Not Ascribe Any Intentions To These Men. They Were Like The Weather, They Didn't Have A Mind. They Merely Drenched You Or Struck You Like Lightning And Moved On, Mindless As Blizzards. Or They Were Like Rocks, A Line Of Sharp Slippery Rocks With Jagged Edges. You Could Walk With Care Along Between The Rocks, Picking Your Steps, And If You Slipped You'd Fall And Cut Yourself, But It Was No Use Blaming The Rocks.

I'm A Person Of Whim, And Easily Distracted. I Don't Like Multitasking. When I'm Doing One Thing, I Like To Do Just That Thing.

I Always Thought Eating Was A Ridiculous Activity Anyway. I'd Get Out Of It Myself If I Could, Though You've Got To Do It To Stay Alive, They Tell Me.

The Darkness Is Really Out There. It's Not Something That's In My Head, Just. It's In My Work Because It's In The World.

I Don't Think Of Poetry As A 'rational' Activity But As An Aural One. My Poems Usually Begin With Words Or Phrases Which Appeal More Because Of Their Sound Than Their Meaning, And The Movement And Phrasing Of A Poem Are Very Important To Me.

Disease Has Always Been A Much Bigger Killer Of Human Beings Than Wars.

I’m Not Used To Girls, Or Familiar With Their Customs. I Feel Awkward Around Them, I Don’t Know What To Say. I Know The Unspoken Rules Of Boys, But With Girls I Sense That I Am Always On The Verge Of Some Unforeseen, Calamitous Blunder.

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

He Considers Me Also A Little Fragile Because Artistic. I Need To Be Cared For, Like A Potted Plant.

I Would Rather Dance As A Ballerina, Though Faultily, Than As A Flawless Clown.

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.

Time Has Not Stood Still. It Has Washed Over Me, Washed Me Away, As If I'm Nothing More Than A Woman Of Sand, Left By A Careless Child Too Near The Water.

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.

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

His Father Was Self-made, But His Mother Was Constructed By Others, And Such Edifices Are Notoriously Fragile.

Don’t Sit Down In The Middle Of The Woods. If You’re Lost In The Plot Or Blocked, Retrace Your Steps To Where You Went Wrong. Then Take The Other Road. And/or Change The Person. Change The Tense. Change The Opening Page.

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.

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

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.

I Tend To Feel If People Say They're Going To Do Something, They Will, If Given The Chance.

And She Finds It Difficult To Believe—that A Person Would Love Her Even When She Isn't Trying. Trying To Figure Out What Other People Need, Trying To Be Worthy.

I'm A Strict, Strict Agnostic. It's Very Different From A Casual, 'i Don't Know.' It's That You Cannot Present As Knowledge Something That Is Not Knowledge. You Can Present It As Faith, You Can Present It As Belief, But You Can't Present It As Fact.

I Did ... Learn An Important Distinction In Graduate School: A Speculation About Who Had Syphilis When Is Gossip If It's About Your Friends, A Plot Element If It's About A Character In A Novel, And Scholarship If It's About John Keats.

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.

What A Moron I Was To Think You Were Sweet And Innocent, When It Turns Out You Were Actually College-educated The Whole Time!

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

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

Hunger Is A Powerful Reorganizer Of The Conscience.

I'm Not An Activist By Nature. I Am Suspicious Of Utopian Thinking And Equally Suspicious Of Its Alternate.

The Answers You Get From Literature Depend On The Questions You Pose.

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

...how Much Needless Despair Has Been Caused By A Series Of Biological Mismatches, A Misalignment Of The Hormones And Pheromones? Resulting In The Fact That The One You Love So Passionately Won't Or Can't Love You. As A Species We're Pathetic That Way: Imperfectly Monogamous.

For If The World Treats You Well, Sir, You Come To Believe You Are Deserving Of It.

I Marvel Again At The Nakedness Of Men's Lives: The Showers Right Out In The Open, The Body Exposed For Inspection And Comparison, The Public Display Of Privates. What Is It For? What Purposes Of Reassurance Does It Serve? The Flashing Of A Badge, Look, Everyone, All Is In Order, I Belong Here. Why Don't Women Have To Prove To One Another That They Are Women? Some Form Of Unbuttoning, Some Split-crotch Routine, Just As Casual. A Doglike Sniffing.

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

When You Are In The Middle Of A Story It Isn't A Story At All, But Only A Confusion; A Dark Roaring, A Blindness, A Wreckage Of Shattered Glass And Splintered Wood; Like A House In A Whirlwind, Or Else A Boat Crushed By The Icebergs Or Swept Over The Rapids, And All Aboard Powerless To Stop It. It's Only Afterwards That It Becomes Anything Like A Story At All. When You Are Telling It, To Yourself Or To Someone Else.

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.

But Nothing Is More Opaque Than Absolute Transparency.

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

Snowman Wakes Before Dawn.

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!

More And More I Feel Like A Letter—deposited Here, Collected There. But A Letter Addressed To No One.

Love Is Giving, Marriage Is Buying And Selling. You Can't Put Love Into A Contract.

If All Fossil Fuel Were To Go Poof! Tomorrow, The Result Would Be A Cataclysmic Social Upheaval, With Food Riots, Warlords, Shutdowns, Breakdown Of Social Order, Water Shortages, And Outbreaks Of Bloodshed And Disease.

Ten Days After The War Ended, My Sister Laura Drove A Car Off A Bridge.

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.

Now That I Am Dead, I Know Everything.

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

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.

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

If You Disagree With Your Government, That's Political. If You Disagree With Your Government That Is Approaching Theocracy, Then You're Evil.

Yelling Is A Form Of Publishing

There Is More Than One Kind Of Freedom," Said Aunt Lydia. "freedom To And Freedom From. In The Days Of Anarchy, It Was Freedom To. Now You Are Being Given Freedom From. Don't Underrate It.

Reading And Writing, Like Everything Else, Improve With Practice. And, Of Course, If There Are No Young Readers And Writers, There Will Shortly Be No Older Ones. Literacy Will Be Dead, And Democracy - Which Many Believe Goes Hand In Hand With It - Will Be Dead As Well.

The Fact Is That Blank Pages Inspire Me With Terror. What Will I Put On Them? Will It Be Good Enough? Will I Have To Throw It Out?

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

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

Eating Is Our Earliest Metaphor, Preceding Our Consciousness Of Gender Difference, Race, Nationality, And Language. We Eat Before We Talk.

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

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.

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.

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

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."

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

Maybe That's What Love Is, I Thought: It's Being Pissed Off.

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.

The Future Of Narrative? Built In, Part Of The Human Template. Not Going Away. The Future Of The Codex Book, With Pages And So Forth? A Platform For Transmitting Narratives.

He Needed To Exist Only In The Present, Without Guilt, Without Expectation.

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

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.

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

We Lived In The Gaps Between The Stories

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.

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

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

Jimmy Found Himself Wishing To Make A Dent In Crake, Get A Reaction; It Was One Of His Weaknesses, To Care What Other People Thought Of Him.

You Can't Keep A Cool Head When You're Drowning In Love. You Just Trash Around A Lot And Scream, And Wear Yourself Out.

A Man Is Just A Woman's Strategy For Making Other Women.

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.

I Walk Away From Him. It's Enormously Pleasing To Me, This Walking Away. It's Like Being Able To Make People Appear And Vanish, At Will.

There's More Private Security In The United States Than There Are Publicly Funded Forces, Like Police. What You Don't Want Is A Meld Of Government And Commerce - You Really Want To Keep Those Two Things Separate - Because Once You Have That Meld, You've Got Megacorruption, And You Have No Third Force To Whom You Can Say This Stuff Is Poisoning Our Kids.

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.

Somebody Has Been A Complete Ratbag All Their Life And They've Gotten Away With It, And They Die Happy And Rich, We So Much Want To Believe That They're Going Off To The Halls Of Judgment, That Their Heart Will Be Weighed Against The Feather Of Truth, That It Will Be Heavy With Sin And It Will Be Eaten By A Crocodile. It's Almost Essential To Our Well-being To Have A Fallback Position Like That. It May Appear As If You've Gotten Away With It, But You'll Pay For It Later.

It's Doors I'm Afraid Of Because I Can't See Through Them, Its The Door Opening By Itself In The Wind I'm Afraid Of.

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

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

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

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.

We're Facing Growing Climate Change, More Floods, More Droughts, More Crisis On A Planetary Level, And The Systems We Put In Place In The Twentieth Century Are Just Not Going To Work. We've Run Out Of Stuff. Our Big Problems Are Going To Be Energy Supplies And Food Supplies. This Is Not A Right-left Issue.

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.

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.

I Sometimes Felt As If These Marks On My Body Were A Kind Of Code, Which Blossomed, Then Faded, Like Invisible Ink Held To A Candle. But If They Were A Code, Who Held The Key To It? I Was Sand, I Was Snow — Written On, Rewritten, Smoothed Over.

I Myself Have 12 Hats And Each One Represents A Different Personality. Why Just Be Yourself.

Debt Is Not Just A Money Thing. It's About Owing And Being Owed. Money Is Just One Thing You Can Exchange. You Can Exchange Good Deeds, You Can Exchange Revenge, You Can Exchange Murders.

There Is Good And Mediocre Writing Within Every Genre.

That Is What You Have To Do Before You Kill, I Thought. You Have To Create An It, Where None Was Before.

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.

Extreme Good, Extreme Evil: The Abilities Required Are Similar.

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

I Grew Up In The North Woods Of Canada. You Had To Know Certain Things About Survival. Wilderness Survival Courses Weren't Very Formalized When I Was Growing Up, But I Was Taught Certain Things About What To Do If I Got Lost In The Woods.

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

Your Friend Is Intellectually Honourable," Jimmy's Mother Would Say. "he Doesn't Lie To Himself.

We Pulled The Seeds Out And Scattered Them On Their Flossy Parachutes, Leaving Only The Leathery Brownish Yellow Tongue, Soft As The Inside Of An Elbow.

A Fist Is More Than The Sum Of Its Fingers.

Mathematical Logic

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.

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

Reading Is One Of The Most Individual Things That Happens. So Every Reader Is Going To Read A Piece In A Slightly Different Way, Sometimes A Radically Different Way.

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.

Writing Is Very Improvisational. It's Like Trying To Fix A Broken Sewing Machine With Safety Pins And Rubber Bands. A Lot Of Tinkering.

My Parents Were Gardeners Themselves, And Perforce They Used Environmental Techniques Because It Was During The War, And You Didn't Have The New Sorts Of Chemicals.

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

Oil Paints...the Look Of Licked Lips.

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

Sons Branch Out, But One Woman Leads To Another.

If Social Stability Goes Pear-shaped, You Have A Choice Between Anarchy And Dictatorship. Most People Will Opt For More Security, Even If They Have To Give Up Some Personal Freedom.

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

It Is Better To Hope Than To Mope!

Why Do Men Feel Threatened By Women?

The Proper Study Of Mankind Is Everything.

Forgiving Men Is So Much Easier Than Forgiving Women.

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.

We Want To Get There Faster. Get Where? Wherever We Are Not. But A Human Soul Can Only Go As Fast As A Man Can Walk, They Used To Say. In That Case, Where Are All The Souls? Left Behind. They Wander Here And There, Slowly, Dim Lights Flickering In The Marshes At Night, Looking For Us. But They're Not Nearly Fast Enough, Not For Us, We're Way Ahead Of Them, They'll Never Catch Up. That's Why We Can Go So Fast: Our Souls Don't Weigh Us Down.

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

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

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

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

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

A Voice Is A Human Gift; It Should Be Cherished And Used, To Utter Fully Human Speech As Possible. Powerlessness And Silence Go Together.

If You're Put On A Pedestal, You're Supposed To Behave Yourself Like A Pedestal Type Of Person. Pedestals Actually Have A Limited Circumference. Not Much Room To Move Around.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Reality Simply Consists Of Different Points Of View.

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.

Under The Old System - Which Is Now So Archaic That A Lot Of People Can't Remember It - If You Wanted Money You Had To Go To The Bank And Take The Money Out In Cash Form, And You Couldn't Take Out Money That You Didn't Have. But With The Credit Card You Can Spend Money You Don't Have, And That Is Just So Tempting.

Speculative Fiction Encompasses That Which We Could Actually Do. Sci-fi Is That Which We're Probably Not Going To See.

Speculative Fiction

Knowing Was A Temptation. What You Don't Know Won't Tempt You.

When I Was Sixteen, It Was Simple. Poetry Existed; Therefore It Could Be Written; And Nobody Had Told Me — Yet — The Many, Many Reasons Why It Could Not Be Written By Me.

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

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

Water Does Not Resist. Water Flows. When You Plunge Your Hand Into It, All You Feel Is A Caress. Water Is Not A Solid Wall, It Will Not Stop You. But Water Always Goes Where It Wants To Go, And Nothing In The End Can Stand Against It. Water Is Patient. Dripping Water Wears Away A Stone. Remember That, My Child. Remember You Are Half Water. If You Can't Go Through An Obstacle, Go Around It. Water Does.

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.

Knowledge Is Power Only As Long As You Keep Your Mouth Shut.

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

I Am Not Your Justification For Existence.

... 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.

They Are Hypocrites, They Think The Church Is A Cage To Keep God In, So He Will Stay Locked Up There And Not Go Wandering About The Earth During The Week, Poking His Nose Into Their Business, And Looking In The Depths And Darkness And Doubleness Of Their Hearts, And Their Lack Of True Charity; And They Believed They Need Only Be Bothered About Him On Sundays When They Have Their Best Clothes On And Their Faces Straight, And Their Hands Washed And Their Gloves On, And Their Stories All Prepared.

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

Bodily Functions

And Consider: It Is Loss To Which Everything Flows, Absence In Which Everything Flowers

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.

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."

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.

Starlet Sex Scandal. Giant Squid Involved.

Time Is Not A Line But A Dimension, Like The Dimensions Of Space.

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.

I Became A Poet At The Age Of Sixteen. I Did Not Intend To Do It. It Was Not My Fault.

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.

Americans Don't Usually Have To Think About Canadian-american Relations, Or, As They Would Put It, American-canadian Relations. Why Think About Something Which You Believe Affects You So Little? We, On The Other Hand, Have To Think About You Whether We Like It Or Not.

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

Great Literature

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.

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

We Have Begun To Slam Doors, And To Throw Things. I Throw My Purse, An Ashtray, A Package Of Chocolate Chips, Which Breaks On Impact. We Are Picking Up Chocolate Chips For Days. Jon Throws A Glass Of Milk, The Milk, Not The Glass: He Knows His Own Strength, As I Do Not. He Throws A Box Of Cheerios, Unopened. The Things I Throw Miss, Although They Are Worse Things. The Things He Throws Hit, But Are Harmless. I Begin To See How The Line Is Crossed, Between Histrionics And Murder.

If You Want To Be A Writer, You Should Go Into The Largest Library You Can Find And Stand There Contemplating The Books That Have Been Written. Then You Should Ask Yourself, 'do I Really Have Anything To Add?' If You Have The Arrogance Or The Humility To Say Yes, You Will Know You Have The Vocation.

I Would Like To Believe This Is A Story I’m Telling. I Need To Believe It. I Must Believe It. Those Who Can Believe That Such Stories Are Only Stories Have A Better Chance. If It’s A Story I’m Telling, Then I Have Control Over The Ending. Then There Will Be An Ending, To The Story, And Real Life Will Come After It. I Can Pick Up Where I Left Off.

...and Nostalgia Swept Through Jimmy Like A Sudden Hunger.

In The Early Fight For Women's Rights, The Point Was Not That Women Were Morally Superior Or Better. The Conversation Was About The Difference Between Men And Women - Power, Privilege, Voting Rights, Etc. Unfortunately, It Quickly Moved To The "women Are Better" Argument. If This Were True In Life Or In Fiction, We Wouldn't Have Any Dark Or Deep Characters. We Wouldn't Have Any Salomes, Carmens, Ophelias. We Wouldn't Have Any Jealousy Or Passion.

Reading ... Changes You. You Aren't The Same Person After You've Read A Particular Book As You Were Before, And You Will Read The Next Book, Unless Both Are Harlequin Romances, In A Slightly Different Way.

The Internet Is 95 Percent Porn And Spam

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

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.

A Truth Should Exist, It Should Not Be Used Like This. If I Love You Is That A Fact Or A Weapon?

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

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

Religions In General Have To Rediscover Their Roots. In Hinduism And The Koran, Animals Are Described As Equals. If You Walk Into A Cathedral And Look At The Decorations Of Early Christianity, There Are Vines, Animals, Creatures And Birds Thriving All Over The Stonework.

The Sands Of Time Are Quicksands ... So Much Can Sink Into Them Without A Trace.

Without A Trace

Trending Author

Gian Carlo Menotti

Ismail Merchant

Category