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Don’t misunderstand me. I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and far more complicated. But sometimes it’s hard to put up with.

Margaret Atwood

Canada was built on dead beavers.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Beaver Built Country People
we lived in the gaps between the stories
MARGARET ATWOOD

Gap Handmaid Stories Tale
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’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
Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?
MARGARET ATWOOD

Handmaid Need Tale Waste
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
I’m not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don’t know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Awkward Boys Girl
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
I was kidnapped by literature at a young age and never wanted to be ransomed.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Age Literature Young
Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Century Novelist Once Time Upon
Show me a character totally without anxieties and I will show you a boring book.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Anxiety Book Character
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

Character Gossip School
Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Harvard Literature Subject
There is no fool like an educated fool.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Educated Emotional Fool People
The way love feels is always only approximate. I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Ignorant Shame Way
When any civilization is dust and ashes,” he said, “art is all that’s left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Art Civilization Dust

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and far more complicated. But sometimes it’s hard to put up with.

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Don’t misunderstand me. I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and far more complicated. But sometimes it’s hard to put up with.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Margaret Atwood Quotes