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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 19

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Even in the tragedies, Shakespeare always put in parts for the comic actors because his audience was mixed. He puts in people who talk like aristocrats. He puts in idiots and fools. He puts in certain middle-range

Even in the tragedies, Shakespeare always put in parts for the comic actors because his audience was mixed. He puts in people who talk like aristocrats. He puts in idiots and fools. He puts in certain middle-range characters. And when you go to the Globe, you realize how that all works. The people who paid more sat in seats around the edge. Everybody else paid a penny. They put it into a tin box - that's why we call it the "box office." They stood in the pit, but they were very close, so when Hamlet was doing his soliloquy, it was addressed to you, the audience - right there.

Margaret Atwood
Character, People, Office
"Margaret Atwood Remixes Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” as a Prison Drama". Interview With Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. September/October 2016.

We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?

Margaret Atwood
Problem, Knows
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

As with all knowledge, once you knew it, you couldn't imagine how it was that you hadn't known it before.

Margaret Atwood
Imagine, Known
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Year of the Flood”, p.193, Anchor

It isn't chic for women to be drunk. Men drunks are more excusable, more easily absolved, but why? It must be thought they have better reasons.

Margaret Atwood
Men, Drunk, Reason
Margaret Atwood (2009). “Cat's Eye”, p.345, Hachette UK

These things sneak up on him for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency.

Margaret Atwood
Funny Life, Vitamins, Reason
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Aug 21, 2016

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, Dust, Civilization
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.167, Anchor

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.

Margaret Atwood
Book, Going Away, Storytelling
Source: www.marandapleasantmedia.com

Keep the faith. Whatever that may be. Don't get too depressed yet, because I have a belief in America being very diverse and ornery, and containing a lot of people who are not going to roll over very easily for a totalitarian dictatorship. That is what I think.

Margaret Atwood
Thinking, People, Belief
"Margaret Atwood answers the question: Is 'The Handmaid's Tale' a feminist book?". www.latimes.com. April 24, 2017.

There's more private security in the United States than there are publicly funded forces, like police. What you don't want is a meld of government and commerce - you really want to keep those two things separate - because once you have that meld, you've got megacorruption, and you have no third force to whom you can say this stuff is poisoning our kids.

Margaret Atwood
Kids, Two, Government
"Margaret Atwood Interview". Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. December 2, 2010.

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. It's a people issue, and it cuts across all our categories.

Margaret Atwood
Running, Cutting, Issues
"Margaret Atwood Interview". Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. December 2, 2010.

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.

Margaret Atwood
Real, Parent, Investing
Source: www.macleans.ca

Why aren't we investing more in alternate tech? The Saudi Arabians are, Scottish Power is. I was just there. Could it be that we're counting on the oil going on forever and ever and ever and us having all of it and getting very rich?

Margaret Atwood
Oil, Forever, Investing
Source: www.macleans.ca

Gravity works in your life, the notion of free will works in your life, however problematic it may at times be.

Margaret Atwood
May, Free Will, Gravity
Source: www.macleans.ca

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.

Margaret Atwood
Responsibility, Community, 19th Century
Source: www.motherjones.com

Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the United States, can you avoid such a thing. In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal. Outside the empire or on the fringes of the empire, you cannot.

Margaret Atwood
Country, Heart, Thinking

It used to be that your bloodlines dictated who you were. But the U.S. became the land of the self-made man, in which not only did you make a fortune but you could make up everything else about yourself as well. You move into a new town with a spurious pedigreed background and you just make yourself up.

Margaret Atwood
Moving, Men, About Yourself
Source: www.motherjones.com

The scroll is coming back (Twitter is a scroll.)

Margaret Atwood
Coming Back
Interview with Paul D. Miller, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

One good maxim to keep in mind, and I can't remember who said it, "You meet the same people on the way down that you meet on the way up, but you're going the other way."

Margaret Atwood
People, Mind, Way
Interview with Paul D. Miller, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

My family was big on sharing. I guess it was just the way I was brought up. Or maybe, I read those fairy tales in which one good turn elicits another. But in writing, yes, some older writers were kind to me when I was young; although some others were not.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Way, Fairy Tale
Interview with Paul D. Miller, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

The biggest debt is always the government debt; it's always debt that government has run up on your behalf.

Margaret Atwood
Running, Government, Debt
Source: www.macleans.ca

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.

Margaret Atwood
Eye, Race, Escaping
Source: www.macleans.ca

We should take a lesson from the Irish potato famine: monocultures are vulnerable. Monocultures of any kind are very vulnerable, because one change and you're cooked. So we should be diversifying, wouldn't you say?

Margaret Atwood
Lessons, Potatoes, Kind
Source: www.macleans.ca

Everybody acts as if they have free will. They act as if they can make these decisions; do they know they don't? I think there's been some back-down on the idea that everything is determined.

Margaret Atwood
Thinking, Ideas, Decision
Source: www.macleans.ca

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.

Margaret Atwood
Believe, Writing, Get Better

In Heaven, there are no debts - all have been paid, one way or another - but in Hell there's nothing but debts, and a great deal of payment is exacted, though you can't ever get all paid up. You have to pay, and pay, and keep on paying. So Hell is like an infernal maxed-out credit card that multiplies the charges endlessly.

Margaret Atwood
Heaven, Way, Cards
Margaret Atwood (2008). “Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth”, House of Anansi Press

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