“Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the count...” — Margaret Atwood Quote

“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.”

“You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.”

“I've never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn't mean they're going to be that way.”

“I don't think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It's essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.”

“...we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.”

“Remember, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

“All adventure is now reactionary.”

“The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.”

“I feel like if I won an award and I was giving my speech and the music started, that's all I'd remember, the humiliation I felt when the music started. It would mar the entire experience for me.”

“Being exposed to theory, stimulated by a basic love of concepts and mathematics, was a marvelous experience.”

“I moved from Kentucky to Miramar, Florida, at about 8. I think I was in second grade. I still had my Southern accent, and down there, you got to experience a melting pot in full fury. All the kids I hung out with were, like, Sicilian kids from Jersey and New York.”