There may not be one Truth - there may be several truths - but saying that is not to say that reality doesn't exist.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that multiple perspectives can coexist without denying the existence of reality.
Margaret Atwood's quote reflects on the nature of truth and reality, indicating that while different individuals may hold their own interpretations and perceptions of truth, this diversity does not negate the presence of an objective reality. It emphasizes the complexity of understanding our world and encourages the acknowledgment of multiple viewpoints while still recognizing a shared reality.
In practice
In a discussion about diverse viewpoints in a seminar, this quote can help illustrate the complexity of understanding truth.
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.
Be confident small immortals. You are not the only voice that all things utter, nor is there eternal silence in the places where you cannot come.
Of the two powers, the two categories that take possession of us when we enter the world (from where?), space is by far the less mysterious. It, too, undergoes transformations. Time, on the other hand, is a hostile element, truly treacherous, I would even say against human nature.
Sometimes the routes leading to feelings of anger are so convoluted and circuitous that it takes enormous skill to discern their original source, or fountainhead. But regardless of the reason for or the source of the anger or the relative ease or complexity in perceiving either the anger or its source - everybody, but everybody, gets angry.
The 'peace' the gospel brings is never the absence of conflict, but an ineffable divine reassurance within the heart of conflict; a peace that surpasses understanding.
In a heated argument we are apt to lose sight of the truth.
God is best known in not knowing him.
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