My Commonplace Book

“I look back over what I’ve written and I know it’s wrong, not because of what I’ve set down, but because of what I’ve omitted. What isn’t there has a presence, like the absence of light.” – Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you’re depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin – everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone – and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?” – Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Thrown over a precipice, you fall or else you fly, you clutch at any hope, however unlikely; however – if I may use such an overworked word – miraculous. What we mean by that is, Against all odds.” – Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself.” – Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth… The living bird is not its labeled bones.” – Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin