I think of bad news as a huge bird, with the wings of a crow and the face of my Grade Four school teacher, sparse bun, rancid teeth, wrinkly frown, pursed mouth and all, sailing around the world under cover of darkness pleased to be the bearer of ill tidings, carrying a basket of rotten eggs, and knowing- as the sun comes up- exactly where to drop them. On me, for one.
Interpretation
This quote personifies bad news, depicting it as a dark, ominous presence that carries negativity and brings misfortune.
Margaret Atwood vividly imagines bad news as a foreboding bird, illustrating how it can unexpectedly and harmfully invade our lives. The detailed description underscores the discomfort and anxiety that bad news brings, emphasizing its uncanny ability to strike at vulnerable moments, as if it hunts for targets to affect negatively. This metaphor captures the heavy burden and emotional weight that negative events and information can leave on individuals.
In practice
In a discussion about how to cope with stress, this quote highlights the inevitability of bad news.
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.
People look with sympathetic eyes only at the blossom and the fruit, and disregard the long period of transition during which the one is ripening into the other.
My prospects for life, though in a measure shaded with uncertainty, hardship and danger, are very animating and bright. My prospects for another life, blessed be God, are still brighter.
Well, maybe it was just that I wasn't going to like anybody because I had to work and I had to explain to my teachers why I wasn't keeping up. I'd fall asleep and things in class and they'd lecture me about the reality of their classroom. I said, 'You want to see my reality?' I opened up my backpack to where you usually keep your pencils. That's where I kept my bills... electric bills, rent... That was my reality.
Even though people may be well known they still hold in their hearts the emotions of a simple person for the moments that are the most important of those we know on earth - birth, marriage, death.
I have so much empathy for these young actors that are 19 and all of a sudden they're beautiful and famous and rich. I'm like, 'Oh my God, I'd be dead.'
It is astonishing how much more people are interested in lengthening life than improving it.
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