You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.
Interpretation
The speaker declares their powerful seductive and artistic nature, inviting challenge while warning of the consequences.
In this quote, Margaret Atwood emphasizes the duality of strength and vulnerability in art and femininity. The metaphor of being a 'goddess' suggests divine power and allure, while the reference to a 'torch song' indicates deep emotional intensity. The invitation to 'try me' suggests confidence and resilience, while the warning of 'you'll burn' highlights the potential risks of engaging with such potent energy, reflecting the complexity of female identity and creative expression.
In practice
This quote would be powerful in a speech about female empowerment.
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.
Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.
Then what shall I write? I can't just write that this happened then this happened then this happened to boring infinitum. I'll let my journal grow just like the mind does, just like a tree or beast does, just like life does. Why should a book tell a tale in a dull straight line? Words should wander and meander. They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing.
I don't like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels... I keep my deep, radical things for my novels.
I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast - talk them or write them down.
Modernity signifies the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable.
Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, 'I've never seen anyone run like that before.' It's more than just a race, it's a style. It's doing something better than anyone else. It's being creative.
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