A writer's wisdom-Margaret Atwood

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.



The story as told in The Odyssey doesn't hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.



Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn't even know you'd done.




This above all, to refuse to be a victim.



War is what happens when language fails.



We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.



We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups.



You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.



A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you.




A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.



A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.



A word after a word after a word is power.



An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.



Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.



Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.




For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.



Gardening is not a rational act.



I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.


I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.



If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.



In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.


Myths can't be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time.



Never pray for justice, because you might get some.




Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.



The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

Pleasure - Kahlil Gibran

Pleasure is a freedom-song, But it is not freedom.
It is the blossoming of your desires,
But it is not their fruit.
It is a depth calling unto a height, But it is not the deep nor the high. It is the caged taking wing,
But it is not space encompassed.
Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedomsong.
And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.


Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked.
I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek.
For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone;
Seven are her sisters, and the least of them is more beautiful than pleasure.
Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?


And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness.
But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement.
They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer.
Yet if it comforts them to regret, let them be comforted.


And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember;
And in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures, lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it.
But even in their foregoing is their pleasure.
And thus they too find a treasure though they dig for roots with quivering hands.
But tell me, who is he that can offend the spirit?
Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night, or the firefly the stars?
And shall your flame or your smoke burden the wind?
Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?


Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.
Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow?
Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived.
And your body is the harp of your soul,
And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.


And now you ask in your heart, "How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?"
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.


People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.