All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.
Interpretation
Sometimes, silence is more powerful than speaking, even if it makes you feel foolish.
In this quote, Margaret Atwood suggests that there are moments in life where remaining silent and observing is wiser than speaking out, even if it might make one feel foolish or uncomfortable. It highlights the importance of reflection and the strength found in restraint, implying that sometimes the most prudent course of action is to listen and absorb rather than to respond impulsively.
In practice
During a meeting where tempers flared, I reminded my colleagues of Atwood's quote to encourage listening rather than arguing.
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.
I'm very proud that I'm smart enough to get to the point
Of all whose words I have heard, no one attains to this, to know that wisdom is apart from all.
We had to learn...that it did not really matter what we expected from life but rather what life expected from us.
It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.
If you have a problem with people living their lives and being authentically who they are, you really should go and do some soul-searching.
Our modern lifestyle is not a political creation. Before 1700, everybody was poor as hell. Life was short and brutish. It wasn't because we didn't have good politicians; we had some really good politicians. But then we started inventing - electricity, steam engines, microprocessors, understanding genetics and medicine and things like that. Yes, stability and education are important - I'm not taking anything away from that - but innovation is the real driver of progress.
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