Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC OOnt FRSCis a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award several times, winning twice. In 2001, she was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. She is also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth18 November 1939
CityOttawa, Canada
CountryCanada
In the evenings there's been thunder, a distant bumping and stumbling, like God on a sullen binge.
I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it.
Is anything wrong, dear? the old joke went. No, why? You moved. Just don't move.
As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.
But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.
for me the novel is a social vehicle, it reflects society.
She had no images of this love. She could offer no anecdotes. It was a belief rather than a memory.
I suppose it's everyone's fate to be reduced to quaintness by those younger than themselves.
Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly. Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God.
I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose.
a handful of crumpled stars
But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion. She renders herself up, is blotted out; enters the darkness of her own body, forgets her name. Immolation is what she wants, however briefly. To exist without boundaries.
I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.
You might 'write from the heart,' but you'd better polish with your brain.