In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
Interpretation
Embrace the natural world and the experience of hard work, particularly in nurturing growth.
Margaret Atwood's quote suggests that during the springtime, a season symbolizing renewal and growth, one should engage deeply with nature and the earth. The imagery of smelling like dirt at the end of the day indicates a sense of fulfillment that comes from working outdoors, planting, or tending to the environment, which symbolizes both the physical and emotional connection to the cycle of life and the importance of hands-on experiences.
In practice
This quote would be perfect as a mantra for a gardening workshop.
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.
Every dew-drop and rain-drop had a whole heaven within it.
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
It is a beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the Moon.
Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.
...Nature builds up her refined and invisible architecture, with a delicacy eluding our conception, yet with a symmetry and beauty which we are never weary of admiring.
Later she sat on the ground in the forest between school and home, and spring was so bright and beautiful, the warm air touched her so tenderly, she could almost feel herself changing into a flower. Her light dress felt like petals. "I love everything," she heard herself say. "So do I," a voice answered. Pearl straightened up and looked around. No one was there.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.