All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate. Margaret Atwood More Quotes by Margaret Atwood More Quotes From Margaret Atwood 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. Margaret Atwood narrative going-away book 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. Margaret Atwood darkness world God gave unto the Animals A wisdom past our power to see: Each knows innately how to live, Which we must learn laboriously. Margaret Atwood knows animal past Sometimes reactions can be quite surprising: readers like things that you, the author, feel you've barely gotten away with; or they dislike one of the parts you secretly think is one of your little gems. Margaret Atwood littles sometimes thinking 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. Margaret Atwood issues growing running The idea of the chickens with the multiple breasts and thighs came from an urban legend that some fast-food places had developed chickens with four thighs. It wasn't true, but it is a suggestive rumor. Margaret Atwood rumor urban-legends ideas 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. Margaret Atwood cutting men fall EXTINCTATHON, Monitored by MaddAddam. Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Do you want to play? Margaret Atwood names play animal Please don't make the mistake of thinking that 'Oryx and Crake' is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it's neutral. Margaret Atwood often-is mistake thinking A fist is more than the sum of its fingers. Margaret Atwood mathematical-logic fists greek 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. Margaret Atwood growth doe children 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. Margaret Atwood smell real past 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. Margaret Atwood finals suicide answers The facts of this world seen clearly are seen through tears. Margaret Atwood tears facts world Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. Margaret Atwood glasses garden way Repeat reading for me shares a few things with hot-water bottles and thumbsucking: comfort, familiarity, the recurrence of the expected. Margaret Atwood water-bottles reading comfort If you're a woman writer, sometime, somewhere, you will be asked: Do you think of yourself as a writer first, or as a woman first? Look out. Whoever asks this hates and fears both writing and women. Margaret Atwood hate writing thinking Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backwards in time and exist in two places at once. Margaret Atwood light time moving 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. Margaret Atwood sacrifice writing thinking 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. Margaret Atwood girl boys school
