Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a sentiment of feeling out of place or less mature compared to others of the same age.
Margaret Atwood's quote expresses the idea that while she shares an age with her peers, she does not identify with their adultness and feels she is playing a role or putting on a facade. This feeling can resonate with many who experience imposter syndrome or doubt their own maturity and accomplishments in comparison to others.
In practice
In a speech about self-acceptance, one might use this quote to illustrate feelings of inadequacy.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
What is it to be a fool for Christ? It is to control one's thoughts when they stray out of line. It is to make the mind empty and free.
We moved together very slowly toward the house, trying to understand its ugliness and ruin and shame.
The true inner self must be drawn up like a jewel from the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion, from indistinction, from immersion in the common, the nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescent.
If you've gotta think about being cool, you ain't cool.
Pride is ugly. It says, 'If you succeed, I am a failure.'
Property is unstable, and youth perishes in a moment. Life itself is held in the grinning fangs of Death, Yet men delay to obtain release from the world. Alas, the conduct of mankind is surprising.
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