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Quote by Margaret Atwood

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Old Babes in the Wood: Stories

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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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“Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes—like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night— little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape will be quite hidden in the end. Ten minutes—ten seconds—of the real H. would correct all this. And yet, even if those ten seconds were allowed me, one second later the little flakes would begin to fall again. The rough, sharp, cleansing tang of her otherness is gone. What pitiable cant to say, ‘She will live forever in my memory!’ ‘Live?’ That is exactly what she won’t do. You might as well think like the old Egyptians that you can keep the dead by embalming them. Will nothing persuade us that they are gone? What’s left? A corpse, a memory, and (in some versions) a ghost. All mockeries or horrors. Three more ways of spelling the word ‘dead.”

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“If I could make the ripples dance to create futures for my sister, I would. As beautiful as the tiny globes of spherical seawater she used to toy with when we were kids--tiny worlds in their own right, of different colors and sizes, floating in midair. I would have arranged everything so she would get a kind and gentle ending. None of them would end with her lying on the ground, helpless and wake. In fact, if I could, I would remove all endings for her. I would give her a way out, a loophole in this infallible mechanism of time.”

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