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When I Was 16 I Started Publishing All Kinds Of Things In School Magazines. My Main Feedback Came From My English Teacher, Miss Bessie B. Billings, Who Said, 'i Can't Understand This At All, Dear, So It Must Be Good.

-Margaret Atwood

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When I Was 16

Margaret Atwood

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When I Was 16 I Started Publishing All Kinds Of Things In School Magazines. My Main Feedback Came From My English Teacher, Miss Bessie B. Billings, Who Said, 'i Can't Understand This At All, Dear, So It Must Be Good.

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More From Margaret Atwood

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.

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

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

Writing Is Alone, But I Don't Think It's Lonely. Ask Any Writer If They Feel Lonely When They're Writing Their Book, And I Think They'll Say No.

Toast Is Me. I Am Toast.

Some People Mistakenly Think Nature Is Very Nice And Benevolent And Never Betrays.

You Think I'm Not A Goddess? Try Me. This Is A Torch Song. Touch Me And You'll Burn.

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.

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.

The Goals Of The Feminist Movement Have Not Been Achieved, And Those Who Claim We're Living In A Post-feminist Era Are Either Sadly Mistaken Or Tired Of Thinking About The Whole Subject.

Inside The Peach, There Is A Stone.

Menopause. A Pause While You Reconsider Men.

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.

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 Word After A Word After A Word Is Power.

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

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

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

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.

Our Problem Right Now Is That We're So Specialized That If The Lights Go Out, There Are A Huge Number Of People Who Are Not Going To Know What To Do. But Within Every Dystopia There's A Little Utopia.

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

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.

What You Get Is No Longer What You See.

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.

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

I Didn't Want Him To Become Gray And Multi-dimensional And Complicated Like Everyone Else. Was Every Heathcliff A Linton In Disguise?

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

My Family Was Scientifically Inclined: My Brother Did Turn Into A Neurophysiologist, And I Almost Became A Scientist Myself. I Could Have Gone That Way.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm A Red Tory. To Get A Fix On This Category, You Have To Go Back To The 19th Century. The Tories Were The Ones Who Believed That Those In Power Had A Responsibility To The Community, That Money Should Not Be The Measure Of All Things.

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

There Is Never Only One, Of Anyone

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

Sons Branch Out, But One Woman Leads To Another.

A Language Is Everything You Do.

Never Pray For Justice, Because You Might Get Some.

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

I Could See How You Could Do Extreme Things For The Person You Loved. Adam One Said That When You Loved A Person, That Love Might Not Always Get Returned The Way You Wanted, But It Was A Good Thing Anyway Because Love Went Out All Around You Like An Energy Wave, And A Creature You Didn't Know Would Be Helped By It.

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

I Myself Discovered Many Authors Through School Reading Lists And Through School Anthologies. The Positives Are: Young Readers Can Find The World Opening Up To Them Through Books They Study. The Negatives May Include Bad Experiences Kids Have - If They Don't Like The Book Or The Teacher, Or The Way The Book Is Taught.

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

About No Subject Are Poets Tempted To Lie So Much As About Their Own Lives.

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.

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.

The Newspaper Stories Were Like Dreams To Us, Bad Dreams Dreamt By Others. How Awful, We Would Say, And They Were, But They Were Awful Without Being Believable. They Were Too Melodramatic, They Had A Dimension That Was Not The Dimension Of Our Lives. 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.

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

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

Writing... Is An Act Of Faith: I Believe It's Also An Act Of Hope, The Hope That Things Can Get Better Than They Are.

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

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.

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

... 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.

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.

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.

How Old Do You Have To Get Before Wisdom Descends Like A Plastic Bag Over Your Head And You Learn To Keep Your Big Mouth Shut? Maybe Never. Maybe You Get More Frivolous With Age.

We Are Very Short On Organs, And The Pig Solution Is Probably A Lot Better Than The Human Clone Solution - Though Maybe Not For The Pigs.

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

Love Is The Pursuit Of Shadows.

Writers And Books Are Cheap Dates, Especially When You Compare The Cost Of A Book With A Ticket To The Opera - Or An Nhl Game.

I Began Writing At The Age Of 5, But There Was A Dark Period Between The Ages Of 8 And 16 When I Didn't Write. I Started Again At 16. And Have No Idea Why, But It Was Suddenly The Only Thing I Wanted To Do.

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

Truly Amazing, What People Can Get Used To, As Long As There Are A Few Compensations.

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.

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

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.

All It Takes,” Said Crake, “is The Elimination Of One Generation. One Generation Of Anything. Beetles, Trees, Microbes, Scientists, Speakers Of French, Whatever. Break The Link In Time Between One Generation And The Next, And It’s Game Over Forever.

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

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

The Cat Jumps Up On The Bed And Tries To Get Onto My Head. It's His Way Of Telling Whether Or Not I'm Dead. If I'm Not, He Wants To Be Scratched; If I Am - He'll Think Of Something

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.

Blondes Are Like White Mice, You Only Find Them In Cages. They Wouldn’t Last Long In Nature. They’re Too Conspicuous.

Anyway, Maybe There Weren't Any Solutions. Human Society, Corpses And Rubble. It Never Learned, It Made The Same Cretinous Mistakes Over And Over, Trading Short-term Gain For Long-term Pain.

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.

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

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

...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.

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

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

Fiction Is Not Necessarily About What You Know, It's About How You Feel. That Is The Truth About Fiction, And The Other Truth Is That All Science Is A Tool, And We Use Our Tools Not To Actualise What We Know, But To Implement How We Feel.

We Understand More Than We Know.

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 Never Say I'm An "ist" Of Any Kind Unless I Know How The Other Person Is Defining It.

I Wait. I Compose Myself. My Self Is A Thing I Must Now Compose, As One Composes A Speech. What I Must Present Is A Made Thing, Not Something Born.

As God Contains All Good Things, He Must Also Contain A Sense Of Playfulness -- A Gift He Has Shared With Creatures Other Than Ourselves, As Witness The Tricks Crows Play, And The Sportiveness Of Squirrels, And The Frolicking Of Kittens.

It's Impossible To Say A Thing Exactly The Way It Was, Because Of What You Say Can Never Be Exact, You Always Have To Leave Something Out, There Are Too Many Parts, Sides, Crosscurrents, Nuances; Too Many Gestures, Which Could Mean This Or That, Too Many Shapes Which Can Never Be Fully Described, Too Many Flavors, In The Air Or On The Tongue, Half-colors, Too Many.

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.

What People Want Is Perfection," Said The Man. "in Themselves." "but They Need The Steps To It To Be Pointed Out," Said The Woman. "in A Simple Order," Said The Man. "with Encouragement," Said The Woman. "and A Positive Attitude.

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.

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

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

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.

It's Very Hard For Students Not To Be In Debt Unless They've Got Big Scholarships Or Rich Parents. And It's Called Investing In Your Future, But Like Any Investment It's Risky Because Your Future Is An Unknown Quantity. However, If You Don't Invest In Your Future, You May Be Flipping Hamburgers For The Rest Of Your Life. So It's A Real Dilemma.

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

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. There Are Others. The Scroll Is Coming Back (twitter Is A Scroll.) Short Forms Are Returning Online. Interactivity Is Coming Back; It Was Always There In Oral Storytelling. Each Form Has Its Pluses And Its Minuses.

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.

A Ratio Of Failures Is Built Into The Process Of Writing. The Wastebasket Has Evolved For A Reason. Think Of It As The Altar Of The Muse Oblivion, To Whom You Sacrifice Your Botched First Drafts, The Tokens Of Your Human Imperfection.

The Trickle-down Theory Of Economics Has It That It's Good For Rich People To Get Even Richer Because Some Of Their Wealth Will Trickle Own, Through Their No Doubt Lavish Spending, Upon Those Who Stand Below Them On The Economic Ladder. Notice That The Metaphor Is Not That Of A Gushing Waterfall But Of A Leaking Tap: Even The Most Optimistic Endorsers Of This Concept Do Not Picture Very Much Real Flow, As Their Language Reveals" Pg. 102.

Time Folds You In Its Arms And Gives You One Last Kiss, And Then It Flattens You Out And Folds You Up And Tucks You Away Until It's Time For You To Become Someone Else's Past Time, And Then Time Folds Again.

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

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.

Expectation Isn't The Same As Desire

In Paradise There Are No Stories, Because There Are No Journeys.

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

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.

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.

Hope Drives Us To Invent New Fixes For Old Messes, Which In Turn Create Ever More Dangerous Messes. Hope Elects The Politician With The Biggest Empty Promise; And As Any Stockbroker Or Lottery Seller Knows, Most Of Us Will Take A Slim Hope Over Prudent And Predictable Frugality. Hope, Like Greed, Fuels The Engine Of Capitalism.

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.

Oil Paints...the Look Of Licked Lips.

It's A Feature Of Our Age That If You Write A Work Of Fiction, Everyone Assumes That The People And Events In It Are Disguised Biography — But If You Write Your Biography, It's Equally Assumed You're Lying Your Head Off.

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

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

Nobody Dies From Lack Of Sex. It's Lack Of Love We Die From.

When We're Young, We Like Happy Endings. When We're A Little Older, We Think Happy Endings Are Unrealistic And So We Prefer Bad But Credible Endings. When We're Older Still, We Realize Happy Endings Aren't So Bad After All.

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 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.

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

Without A Trace

These Things You Did Were Like Prayers; You Did Them And You Hoped They Would Save You. And For The Most Part They Did. Or Something Did; You Could Tell By The Fact That You Were Still Alive.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The World Is Being Run By People My Age, Men My Age, With Falling-out Hair And Health Worries, And It Frightens Me. When The Leaders Were Older Than Me I Could Believe In Their Wisdom, I Could Believe They Had Transcended Rage And Malice And The Need To Be Loved. Now I Know Better. I Look At The Faces In Newspapers, In Magazines, And Wonder: What Greeds, What Furies Drive Them On?

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.

The Problem With Meditating Is I Generally Go To Sleep, And That's Because I'm Doing It Wrong.

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.

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

Once Upon A Time, Novelists Of The 19th Century, Such As Charles Dickens, Published In Serial Form.

Once Upon A Time

The Truth Is Seldom Welcome, Especially At Dinner.

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

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.

Some Of The Old Diseases That We Think Are Gone - Case In Point, Measles - Are Back, Now That Somebody Has Spread Around, In A Very Wicked Way, The Idea That These Inoculations Were Making Children Autistic. Now We're Getting Outbreaks That Are Killing Children. The End Result Is, If You Create A Population That Lacks Immunity, And Diseases Are Still There, You're Going To Get Outbreaks And You're Going To Get Death.

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

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.

All Fathers Are Invisible In Daytime; Daytime Is Ruled By Mothers And Fathers Come Out At Night. Darkness Brings Home Fathers, With Their Real, Unspeakable Power. There Is More To Fathers Than Meets The Eye.

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

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

People Use Technology Only To Mean Digital Technology. Technology Is Actually Everything We Make.

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

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

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.

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

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.

And Yet It Disturbs Me To Learn I Have Hurt Someone Unintentionally. I Want All My Hurts To Be Intentional.

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.

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

Speculative Fiction

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.

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

Every Utopia - Let's Just Stick With The Literary Ones - Faces The Same Problem: What Do You Do With The People Who Don't Fit In?

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.

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

I Look Up At The Ceiling, Tracing The Foliage Of The Wreath. Today It Makes Me Think Of A Hat, The Large-brimmed Hats Women Used To Wear At Some Period During The Old Days: Hats Like Enormous Halos, Festooned With Fruit And Flowers, And The Feathers Of Exotic Birds; Hats Like An Idea Of Paradise, Floating Just Above The Head, A Thought Solidified.

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

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

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.

It Doesn't Really Matter What "genre" Your Book Is. What Matters Is That It's A Good Book Of Its Kind. Whatever That Kind May Be.

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?

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

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.

Where To Start Is The Problem, Because Nothing Begins When It Begins And Nothing's Over When It's Over, And Everything Needs A Preface: A Preface, A Postscript, A Chart Of Simultaneous Events.

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

Writing Poetry Is A State Of Free Float.

I Read A Piece By A Guy Out In Alberta That Said Canadians Are Lazy Because They're Not Patenting Enough New Inventions. I Disagree. Canadians Invent A Lot Of Stuff. Actually Patenting Them Is Expensive.

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

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

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.

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.

Screw Poetry, It’s You I Want, Your Taste, Rain On You, Mouth On Your Skin.

Each Form Has Its Pluses And Its Minuses.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

Ah Men, Why Do You Want All This Attention? I Can Write Poems For Myself, Make Love To A Doorknob If Absolutely Necessary. What Do You Have To Offer Me I Can't Find Otherwise Except Humiliation? Which I No Longer Need.

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.

Madness Is Only An Amplification Of What You Already Are.

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.

It's A Lifelong Failing: She Has Never Been Prepared. But How Can You Have A Sense Of Wonder If You're Prepared For Everything? Prepared For The Sunset. Prepared For The Moonrise. Prepared For The Ice Storm. What A Flat Existence That Would Be.

How Could I Be Sleeping With This Particular Man.... Surely Only True Love Could Justify My Lack Of Taste.

Not Real Can Tell Us About Real.

Fear Has A Smell, As Love Does.

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 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?

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

The Only Way You Can Write The Truth Is To Assume That What You Set Down Will Never Be Read. Not By Any Other Person, And Not Even By Yourself At Some Later Date. Otherwise You Begin Excusing Yourself. You Must See The Writing As Emerging Like A Long Scroll Of Ink From The Index Finger Of Your Right Hand; You Must See Your Left Hand Erasing It.

We Are A Society Dying, Said Aunt Lydia, Of Too Much Choice.

I Grew Up Amongst Biologists.

Nature Is To Zoos As God Is To Churches.

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

The Reader Cannot See Into Your Heart. He Will Know Only What You Tell Him. Make The Blind See Your Words. Make The Hard-hearted Feel. Make The Deaf Hear.

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.

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