Myths can’t be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time.
Meaning of the quote
The quote means that old stories and myths from the past can't be fully understood today in the same way they were understood long ago. Instead, we need to find our own new meanings and interpretations of these ancient stories based on our own lives and experiences in the present time.
More quotes from Margaret Atwood
A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.
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Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.
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Canada was built on dead beavers.
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The story as told in The Odyssey doesn’t hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.
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An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.
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We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups.
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War is what happens when language fails.
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You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.
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The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.
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Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
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Never pray for justice, because you might get some.
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I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.
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A word after a word after a word is power.
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Gardening is not a rational act.
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A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there’s less of you.
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A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.
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In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
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Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn’t even know you’d done.
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We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.
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If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.
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This above all, to refuse to be a victim.
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For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.
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I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‘race’ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.
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Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.
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Myths can’t be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time.
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If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.
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The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not ‘Am I really that oppressed?’ but ‘Am I really that boring?’
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The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.
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