Background Image

...

What Is It The I'll Want From You? Not Love: That Would Be Too Much To Ask. Not Forgiveness, Which Isn't Yours To Bestow. Only A Listener, Perhaps; Only Someone Who Will See Me. Don't Prettify Me Though, Whatever Else You Do: I Have No Wish To Be A Decorated Skull. But I Leave Myself In Your Hands. What Choice Do I Have? By The Time You Read This Last Page, That- If Anywhere- Is The Only Place I Will Be.

-Margaret Atwood

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

What Is It The

Margaret Atwood

...

What Is It The I'll Want From You? Not Love: That Would Be Too Much To Ask. Not Forgiveness, Which Isn't Yours To Bestow. Only A Listener, Perhaps; Only Someone Who Will See Me. Don't Prettify Me Though, Whatever Else You Do: I Have No Wish To Be A Decorated Skull. But I Leave Myself In Your Hands. What Choice Do I Have? By The Time You Read This Last Page, That- If Anywhere- Is The Only Place I Will Be.

Views: 72270

Topic

More From Margaret Atwood

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

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.

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

You Can Examine The Whole 19th Century From The Point Of View Of Who Would Have Maxed Out Their Credit Cards. Emma Bovary Would Have Maxed Hers Out. No Question. Mr. Scrooge Would Not Have. He Would Have Snipped His Up.

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

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

We Battled In Secret, Undeclared, And After A While I No Longer Fought Back Because I Never Won. The Only Defense Was Flight, Invisibility.

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

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.

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

I Know That Some Books And Some Writers, You Can Pretty Much Draw A Square Around It And Say, 'nobody Under 40,' Or 'nobody Under 25.' With My Books, It Always Has Been, And Continues To Be, Spread Right Across The Board, And I Think The Operative Term Is 'reader.'

You Need A Certain Amount Of Nerve To Be A Writer, An Almost Physical Nerve, The Kind You Need To Walk A Log Across A River.

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.

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

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.

Then Sail, My Fine Lady, On The Billowing Wave - The Water Below Is As Dark As The Grave, And Maybe You'll Sink In Your Little Blue Boat - It's Hope, And Hope Only, That Keeps Us Afloat

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 ... Providence Appears To Protect Such Women, Maybe Out Of Astonishment.

Show Me A Character Totally Without Anxieties And I Will Show You A Boring Book.

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

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

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.

If You Want What's In The Package You Should At Least Know How To Get The String Off, Is What I Say.

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.

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.

We Shouldn't Be Saying 'save The Planet'; We Should Be Saying: 'save Viable Conditions In Which People Can Live.' That's What We're Dealing With Here.

Walking Was Not Fast Enough, So We Ran. Running Was Not Fast Enough, So We Galloped. Galloping Was Not Fast Enough, So We Sailed. Sailing Was Not Fast Enough, So We Rolled Merrily Along On Long Metal Tracks. Long Metal Tracks Were Not Fast Enough, So We Drove. Driving Was Not Fast Enough, So We Flew. Flying Isn't Fast Enough For Us. 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.

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 Didn't Go To School For A Full Year Until I Was 12. In The Summer I Was A Wild Child In The Woods, With No Shoes, And In The Fall It Was Back To The City, Shoe Shops And School.

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

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.

A Rat In A Maze Is Free To Go Anywhere, As Long As It Stays Inside The Maze.

Powerlessness And Silence Go Together.

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.

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

I Have A Fork And A Spoon, But Never A Knife… As If I’m Lacking Manual Skills Or Teeth. I Have Both, However. That’s Why I’m Not Allowed A Knife.

Because I Am A Mother, I Am Capable Of Being Shocked: As I Never Was When I Was Not One.

Nature Is To Zoos As God Is To Churches.

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.

Never Pray For Justice, Because You Might Get Some.

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.

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

When 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.

People Cry At Weddings For The Same Reason They Cry At Happy Endings: Because They So Desperately Want To Believe In Something They Know Is Not Credible.

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

I Used To Think Of My Body As An Instrument, Of Pleasure, Or A Means Of Transportation, Or An Implement For The Accomplishment Of My Will.

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.

I Was Once A Graduate Student In Victorian Literature, And I Believe As The Victorian Novelists Did, That A Novel Isn't Simply A Vehicle For Private Expression, But That It Also Exists For Social Examination. I Firmly Believe This.

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

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.

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

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

Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down. I Repeat This To Myself But It Conveys Nothing. You Might As Well Say, Don't Let There Be Air; Or Don't Be. I Suppose You Could Say That.

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

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

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.

When I Am Lonely For Boys It’s Their Bodies I Miss. I Study Their Hands Lifting The Cigarettes In The Darkness Of The Movie Theaters, The Slope Of A Shoulder, The Angle Of A Hip. Looking At Them Sideways, I Examine Them In Different Lights. My Love For Them Is Visual: That Is The Part Of Them I Would Like To Possess. Don’t Move, I Think. Stay Like That, Let Me Have That.

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

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

I'm Working On My Own Life Story. I Don't Mean I'm Putting It Together; No, I'm Taking It Apart. If You'd Wanted The Narrative Line You Should Have Asked Earlier, When I Still Knew Everything And Was More Than Willing To Tell. That Was Before I Discovered The Virtues Of Scissors, The Virtues Of Matches.

Winning Intoxicates You, And Numbs You To The Sufferings Of Others.

Suffering Of Others

If One Of The Arguments Against Eating Meat Is To Do With Cruelty And Animal Intelligence, Then Lab Meat Avoids That. There's Also The Environmental Argument For It.

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

Roughing It Builds A Boy's Character, But Only Certain Kinds Of Roughing It.

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

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.

I Planned My Death Carefully, Unlike My Life, Which Meandered Along From One Thing To Another, Despite My Feeble Attempts To Control It.

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.

Laughter May Instruct But It May Also Conceal, Defending The Joker Against Anger And Retaliation: A Game Is Only A Game.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

The True Story Is Vicious And Multiple And Untrue After All. Why Do You Need It? Don’t Ever Ask For The True Story.

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

We Were The People Who Were Not In The Papers. We Lived In The Blank White Spaces At The Edges Of Print. It Gave Us More Freedom. We Lived In The Gaps Between The Stories.

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

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.

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

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

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

We'll Choose Knowledge No Matter What, We'll Maim Ourselves In The Process, We'll Stick Our Hands Into The Flames For It If Necessary. Curiosity Is Not Our Only Motive; Love Or Grief Or Despair Or Hatred Is What Drives Us On. We'll Spy Relentlessly On The Dead; We'll Open Their Letters, We'll Read Their Journals, We'll Go Through Their Trash, Hoping For A Hint, A Final Word, An Explanation, From Those Who Have Deserted Us--who've Left Us Holding The Bag, Which Is Often A Good Deal Emptier Than We'd Supposed.

There's An Epigram Tacked To My Office Bulletin Board, Pinched From A Magazine -- "wanting To Meet An Author Because You Like His Work Is Like Wanting To Meet A Duck Because You Like Pâté.

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

Within One's Own Family Money Is Not The Measure Of Things, Unless The Person Is An Absolute Scrooge. Only The Most Extreme Kind Of Monster Would Put A Price On Everything. There Are All Kinds Of Other Things That We Are Not Supposed To Sell - Political Influence Being One Of Them. We Too Rarely Have Public Conversations About The Common Sense Of Money. We Too Rarely Talk About The Human Cost Of Putting Some Of These Economic Measures Into Effect.

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.

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

Home Is Where The Heart Is, I Thought Now, Gathering Myself Together In Betty's Luncheonette. I Had No Heart Any More, It Had Been Broken; Or Not Broken, It Simply Wasn't There Any More. It Had Been Scooped Neatly Out Of Me Like The Yolk From A Hard-boiled Egg, Leaving The Rest Of Me Bloodless And Congealed And Hollow. I'm Heartless, I Thought. Therefore I'm Homeless.

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

I Tried For The Longest Time To Find Out What Deconstructionism Was. Nobody Was Able To Explain It To Me Clearly. The Best Answer I Got Was From A Writer, Who Said, 'honey, It's Bad News For You And Me.

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.

Foreignness Is All Around. Only In The Heart Of The Heart Of The Country, Namely The Heart Of The United States, Can You Avoid Such A Thing. In The Center Of An Empire, You Can Think Of Your Experience As Universal. Outside The Empire Or On The Fringes Of The Empire, You Cannot.

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

You Meet The Same People On The Way Down That You Meet On The Way Up, But You're Going The Other Way.

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

Madness Is Only An Amplification Of What You Already Are.

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

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.

You Can’t Buy It, But It Has A Price,” Said Oryx. “everything Has A Price.

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.

Gardening Is Not A Rational Act.

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.

The Reason They Invented Coffins, To Lock The Dead In, Preserve Them, They Put Makeup On Them; They Didn't Want Them Spreading Or Changing Into Anything Else. The Stone With The Name And Date Was On Them To Weight Them Down.

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.

My Good Intentions Are Completely Lethal.

Good Intentions

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.

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

Starlet Sex Scandal. Giant Squid Involved.

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.

A Language Is Everything You Do.

I'm Bad At Picking Heroes.

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?

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.

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

But Nothing Is More Opaque Than Absolute Transparency.

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

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.

Is Anything Wrong, Dear? The Old Joke Went. No, Why? You Moved. Just Don't Move.

Messy Love Is Better Than None, I Guess. I Am No Authority On Sane Living.

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

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.

Where Do The Words Go When We Have Said Them?

There's A Difference Between Describing And Evoking Something. You Can Describe Something And Be Quite Clinical About It. To Evoke It, You Call It Up In The Reader. That's What Writers Do When They're Good.

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

At Last You, Will Say (maybe Without Speaking) (there Are Mountains Inside Your Skull Garden And Chaos, Ocean And Hurricane; Certain Corners Of Rooms, Portraits Of Great-grandmothers, Curtains Of A Particular Shade; Your Deserts; Your Private Dinosaurs; The First Woman) All I Need To Know: Tell Me Everything Just As It Was From The Beginning.

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

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

He's Lost Something, Some Illusion I Used To Think Was Necessary To Him. He's Come To Realize He Too Is Human. Or Is This A Performance, For My Benefit, To Show Me He's Up-to-date? Maybe Men Shouldn't Have Been Told About Their Own Humanity. It's Only Made Them Uncomfortable. It's Only Made Them Trickier, Slier, More Evasive, Harder To Read.

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.

It Is Better To Hope Than To Mope!

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.

Every Habit He's Ever Had Is Still There In His Body, Lying Dormant Like Flowers In The Desert. Given The Right Conditions, All His Old Addictions Would Burst Into Full And Luxuriant Bloom.

All Fiction Is About People, Unless It's About Rabbits Pretending To Be People. It's All Essentially Characters In Action, Which Means Characters Moving Through Time And Changes Taking Place, And That's What We Call 'the Plot'.

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

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.

Why Do Men Feel Threatened By Women?

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

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.

Anaesthesia, That's One Technique: If It Hurts, Invent A Different Pain.

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

I Believe In The Resistance As I Believe There Can Be No Light Without Shadow; Or Rather, No Shadow Unless There Is Also Light.

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

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

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.

I Think Calling It Climate Change Is Rather Limiting. I Would Rather Call It The Everything Change.

Modesty Is Invisibility... Never Forget It. To Be Seen - To Be Seen - Is To Be... Penetrated. What You Must Be Girls, Is Impenetrable.

Does Feminist Mean Large Unpleasant Person Who'll Shout At You Or Someone Who Believes Women Are Human Beings. To Me It's The Latter, So I Sign Up

I Think The Book You Always Like Best Is The One You're About To Write.

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.

I Was Sand, I Was Snow—written On, Rewritten, Smoothed Over.

These Things Sneak Up On Him For No Reason, These Flashes Of Irrational Happiness. It's Probably A Vitamin Deficiency.

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.

Fear Has A Smell, As Love Does.

Gardening Is Not A Rational Act. What Matters Is The Immersion Of The Hands In The Earth, That Ancient Ceremony Of Which The Pope Kissingthe Tarmac Is Merely A Pallid Vestigial Remnant.

No Matter How Much You've Been Warned, Death Always Comes Without Knocking. Why Now? Is The Cry. Why So Soon? It's The Cry Of A Child Being Called Home At Dusk.

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

Happiness Is A Garden Walled With Glass: There's No Way In Or Out. In Paradise There Are No Stories, Because There Are No Journeys. It's Loss And Regret And Misery And Yearning That Drive The Story Forward, Along Its Twisted Road.

Touch Comes Before Sight, Before Speech. It Is The First Language And The Last, And It Always Tells The Truth.

The Cemetery Has ... An Inscription: 'though I Walk Through The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death I Will Fear No Evil, For Thou Art With Me.' Yes, It Does Feel Deceptively Safer With Two; But Thou Is A Slippery Character. Every Thou I've Known Has Had A Way Of Going Missing.

Some Travelers Think They Want To Go To Foreign Places But Are Dismayed When The Places Turn Out Actually To Be Foreign.

The Past Is A Closed Door.

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.

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

How Easy It Is, Treachery. You Just Slide Into It.

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

The Fabric Of Democracy Is Always Fragile Everywhere Because It Depends On The Will Of Citizens To Protect It, And When They Become Scared, When It Becomes Dangerous For Them To Defend It, It Can Go Very Quickly.

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

It Was Very Interesting To Me That When Louisiana Was Destroyed In That Flood The Fundamentalists Were Very Quick To Say, It's The Punishment Of God On A Sinful City. Now That The Oil Industry Has Been So Hard Hit In Galveston, Are They Up On Their Pulpits Saying, God Is Punishing The Oil Industry? No, No, No!

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?

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.

Every Aspect Of Human Technology Has A Dark Side, Including The Bow And Arrow.

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

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.

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.

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

Without A Trace

Farewells Can Be Shattering, But Returns Are Surely Worse. Solid Flesh Can Never Live Up To The Bright Shadow Cast By Its Absence.

Plague Has Hung Over Human History. The Biggest Human Extinction Was After 1492 In North And South America When The Mortality Rate Was 95 Per Cent, Which Is Enormous. But Again, I'm Actually Giving You Grounds For Optimism: There Were Enough To Continue. The Five Per Cent Who Made It Through Are What You Need To Survive A Bottleneck, Which We Have Been Through Before.

All Fat Women Look The Same; They All Look 42.

The Human Moral Keyboard Is Limited ... There's Nothing You Can Play On It That Hasn't Been Played Before. And, My Dear Friends, I Am Sorry To Say This, But It Has Its Lower Notes.

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.

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.

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.

Never Mind. Point Being That You Don't Have To Get Too Worked Up About Us, Dear Educated Minds. You Don't Have To Think Of Us Aas Real Girls, Real Flesh And Blood, Real Pain, Real Injustice. That Might Be Too Upsetting. Just Discard The Sordid Part. Consider Us Pure Symbol. We're No More Real Than Money.

A Ratio Of Failures Is Built Into The Process Of Writing. The Wastebasket Has Evolved For A Reason.

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.

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.

I Spent Much Of My Childhood In Northern Quebec, And Often There Was No Radio, No Television - There Wasn't A Lot To Entertain Us. When It Rained, I Stayed Inside Reading, Writing, Drawing.

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

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

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.

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.

If A God Showed Up Every Time You Put A Quarter In The Prayer Slot It Wouldn't Be God, It Would Be A Puppet That You Could Control By Doing That...that Would Make The Deity Subservient To You. So It Wouldn't Be A Deity Would It?

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

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

It's His Word Against The Commander's, Unless He Wants To Head A Posse. Kick In The Door, And What Did I Tell You? Caught In The Act, Sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, Eat Those Words.

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.

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.

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

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.

Trending Author

Jeffrey Eugenides

Benjamin E. Mays

Category