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Quote by Margaret Atwood

Work

The Testaments

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Author

Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is a renowned Canadian poet, novelist, playwright, and critic, born on November 18, 1939. Her works are known for their unique style and profound insights into social issues, with notable titles including 'The Handmaid's Tale' and 'Cat's Eye'. more

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“The DJ announced the couple. As Alfie took Camila in his arms and spun her around, the strains of Kanye West's "Gold Digger" blasted across the tent. Camila and Alfie stood paralyzed on the dance floor, staring at us with horror on their faces. Mary Ellen just about leapt on top of the DJ's equipment in an attempt to shut it off. He immediately understood he was in huge trouble, and after a few seconds of fumbling, Lonestar started to play. Although we tried to recover the best we could, the damage was done. The couple danced together, but Camila's face was ashen as she clearly fought back tears. Mary Ellen and I cornered the DJ to threaten his life, but he told us the groom's daughters had given him the orders, telling him it was a funny joke that their future stepmother would love. How could anyone believe jokes were ever appropriate at weddings? Apparently they had also given him $500 to play the song, which really sealed the deal. There was nothing scarier than a mean girl with a boatload of cash.”

“Then he asked my age, and I asked his. That's the tradition in China. If we know each other's ages we can understand each other's past. We chinese have been collective for so long, personal histories are not worth mentioning. Therefore as soon as Xiaolin and I knew how old the other was, we knew exactly what big shit happened in our lives. The introduction of the One Child Policy shortly before our births, for instance, and the fact that, in 1985, two pandas were sent to the USA as a national gift and we had to sing a tearful panda song at school. 1989 was the Tiananment Square student demonstration.”

“When it became clear that Xi Jinping was placing his bet on fortifying the status quo, another Party aristocrat, Hu Dehua, the sixty-three-year-old son of a previous Party chief, Hu Yaobang, used the protection afforded by his family name and pedigree to openly criticize the president. The real reason the Soviets fell, Hu Dehua argued, was that they couldnt stop themselves from appropriating public property by graft and bribery. The Party, Hu said, was indeed facing a crisis. There are two options: to suppress the opposition or to reach reconciliation with the people, he said. It had faced this choice once before, in 1989; and in an astonishing acknowledgment of the bloodshed at Tiananmen, he asked, What does this mean: man enough? Is driving battle tanks against your own people man enough?”

“Daddy," she says again, this time putting more of a needy whine into her voice. It is the thing that has swayed him, these times when he has come near to turning on her: remembering that she is his little girl. Reminding him that he has been, up to today, a good father. It is a manipulation. Something of her is warped out of true by this moment, and from now on all her acts of affection toward her father will be calculated, performative. Her childhood dies, for all intents and purposes. But that is better than all of her dying, she knows.”