The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.
Interpretation
Pretending that a secret doesn't exist is an effective method to maintain its secrecy.
This quote by Margaret Atwood suggests that the act of keeping a secret can often be achieved by simply treating it as if it is not a secret at all. By not acknowledging the secret, one reduces the risk of it being revealed, as it avoids drawing attention and speculation from others.
In practice
In a discussion about privacy, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of discretion.
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.
Only when a tree has fallen can you take the measure of it. It is the same with a man.
A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master in that science when he has learned that... he is going to be a beginner all his life.
When you see the right thing to do, you'd better do it.
Thyself shall see the act; For, as thou urgest justice, be assured Thou shalt have justice, more than thou desir'st.
"The flowers have appeared in our land: the time of pruning is come: the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land." When the soul, like the solitary turtle-dove, retires and recollects itself in meditation to converse with God, then the flowers, that is, good desires, appear; then comes the time of pruning, that is, the correction of faults that are discovered in mental prayer.
The main thing, of course, always, is the fact that there is only one of you in the world, just one, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost. Ambition is not enough; necessity is everything.
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