This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.
Interpretation
The quote expresses nostalgia for a shared experience that can never be recreated.
In this quote, Margaret Atwood reflects on the poignancy of lost opportunities and experiences that can never be relived. It encapsulates a longing for a simple yet profound moment of companionship and joy that is forever out of reach, highlighting the deep emotional impact of certain relationships and shared memories.
In practice
In a heartfelt conversation about lost loved ones during a memorial service.
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.
Being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties.
I think it's easy to mistake understanding for empathy - we want empathy so badly. Maybe learning to make that distinction is part of growing up. It's hard and ugly to know somebody can understand you without even liking you.
Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional.
You know me better than you think, you know, and you shall know me better yet.
Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.
A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.
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