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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.

Margaret Atwood

I’m a novelist, and idle speculation is what novelists do. How odd to spend one’s life trying to pretend that non-existent people are real: though no odder, I suppose, than what government bureaucrats do, which is trying to pretend that real people are non-existent.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Government People Real
Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Harvard Literature Subject
Show me a character totally without anxieties and I will show you a boring book.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Anxiety Book Character
How shrunk, how dwindled, in our times Creation’s mighty seed – For Man has broke the Fellowship With murder, lust, and greed.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Greed Lust Men
I’m bad at picking heroes.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Bad Hero Pick Theory
Confronted by too much emptiness … the brain invents. Loneliness creates company as thirst creates water. How many sailors have been wrecked in pursuit of islands that were merely a shimmering?
MARGARET ATWOOD

Island Loneliness Water
Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Body Embroider Eye Leg
Canada was built on dead beavers.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Beaver Built Country People
There is no fool like an educated fool.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Educated Emotional Fool People
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?
MARGARET ATWOOD

Animal Forever Joy
Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?
MARGARET ATWOOD

Handmaid Need Tale Waste
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.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Alive Fact Prayer
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.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Children Fall Summer
Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Century Novelist Once Time Upon
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

Boy Girl School
I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Inspirational Inspire Motivational

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Margaret Atwood Quotes