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Margaret Atwood Quotes

I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw Picture Quote #1

I’m a person of whim, and easily distracted. I don’t like multitasking. When I’m doing one thing, I like to do just that thing Picture Quote #1

Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it Picture Quote #1

Science is a tool, and we invent tools to do things we want. It’s a question of how those tools are used by people Picture Quote #1

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it Picture Quote #1

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof Picture Quote #1

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Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues? Picture Quote #1

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book Picture Quote #1

Fiction is not necessarily about what you know, it’s about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel Picture Quote #1

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn’t write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do Picture Quote #1

I didn’t go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school Picture Quote #1

If one of the arguments against eating meat is to do with cruelty and animal intelligence, then lab meat avoids that. There’s also the environmental argument for it Picture Quote #1

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Like many modern poets, I tend to conceal rhymes by placing them in the middle of lines, and to avoid immediate alliteration and assonance in favor of echoes placed later in the poems Picture Quote #1

Our problem right now is that we’re so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there’s a little utopia Picture Quote #1

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you’re opposed to it. But when you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that Picture Quote #1

There’s a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That’s what writers do when they’re good Picture Quote #1

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge Picture Quote #1

Younger people have greatest fears. Why is that? Because they don’t know the plot. They don’t know their own individual plot... they don’t know what’s going to happen to them Picture Quote #1

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Karen wasn’t hard, she was soft, too soft. A soft touch. Her hair was soft, her smile was soft, her voice was soft. She was so soft there was no resistance. Hard things sank into her, they went right through her, and if she made a real effort, out the other side. Then she didn’t have to see them or hear them, or even touch them Picture Quote #1

When I am lonely for boys it’s their bodies I miss. I study their hands lifting the cigarettes in the darkness of the movie theaters, the slope of a shoulder, the angle of a hip. Looking at them sideways, I examine them in different lights. My love for them is visual: that is the part of them I would like to possess. Don’t move, I think. Stay like that, let me have that Picture Quote #1

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it Picture Quote #1

I thought everyone would be familiar with this figure: if I’d studied a thing in school I assumed it was general knowledge. I hadn’t yet discovered that I lived in a sort of transparent balloon, drifting over the world without making much contact with it, and that the people I knew appeared to me at a different angle from the one at which they appeared to themselves; and that the reverse was also true. I was smaller to others, up there in my balloon, than I was to myself. I was also blurrier Picture Quote #1

So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it’s the hardest to do anything with. That’s about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what Picture Quote #1

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. All of them? Sure, he says. Think about it. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist Picture Quote #1

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We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they’re not nearly fast enough, not for us, we’re way ahead of them, they’ll never catch up. That’s why we can go so fast: our souls don’t weigh us down Picture Quote #1

I don’t want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can’t even see it, something that’s drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead Picture Quote #1

A wave of blood goes up to my head, my stomach shrinks together, as if something dangerous has just missed hitting me. It’s as if I’ve been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if I’ve heard other people talking about me, saying bad things about me, behind my back. There’s the same flush of shame, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with myself. But I don’t know where these feelings have come from, what I’ve done Picture Quote #1

Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ice. The blade of the skate floats, she knows, on a thin film of water, which it melts by pressure and which freezes behind it. This is the freedom of the present tense, this sliding edge Picture Quote #1

In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as possible. I pretend to myself that I would be quite happy in a hermit’s cave, living on gruel, if someone else would make the gruel. Gruel, like so many other things, is beyond me Picture Quote #1

Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it’s noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear Picture Quote #1

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Friendship Quotes

Motivational Quotes

Inspirational Quotes

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Text Quotes

I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw (Margaret Atwood Quotes) I’m a person of whim, and easily distracted. I don’t like multitasking. When I’m doing one thing, I like to do just that thing (Margaret Atwood Quotes) Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it (Margaret Atwood Quotes) Science is a tool, and we invent tools to do things we want. It’s a question of how those tools are used by people (Margaret Atwood Quotes) You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it (Margaret Atwood Quotes) If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof (Margaret Atwood Quotes) Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues? (Margaret Atwood Quotes) A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book (Margaret Atwood Quotes) Fiction is not necessarily about what you know, it’s about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel (Margaret Atwood Quotes) I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn’t write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do (Margaret Atwood Quotes) I didn’t go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school (Margaret Atwood Quotes) If one of the arguments against eating meat is to do with cruelty and animal intelligence, then lab meat avoids that. There’s also the environmental argument for it (Margaret Atwood Quotes) Like many modern poets, I tend to conceal rhymes by placing them in the middle of lines, and to avoid immediate alliteration and assonance in favor of echoes placed later in the poems (Margaret Atwood Quotes) Our problem right now is that we’re so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there’s a little utopia (Margaret Atwood Quotes) The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you’re opposed to it. But when you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that (Margaret Atwood Quotes) There’s a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That’s what writers do when they’re good (Margaret Atwood Quotes) You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge (Margaret Atwood Quotes) Younger people have greatest fears. Why is that? Because they don’t know the plot. They don’t know their own individual plot... they don’t know what’s going to happen to them (Margaret Atwood Quotes) Karen wasn’t hard, she was soft, too soft. A soft touch. Her hair was soft, her smile was soft, her voice was soft. She was so soft there was no resistance. Hard things sank into her, they went right through her, and if she made a real effort, out the other side. Then she didn’t have to see them or hear them, or even touch them (Margaret Atwood Quotes) When I am lonely for boys it’s their bodies I miss. I study their hands lifting the cigarettes in the darkness of the movie theaters, the slope of a shoulder, the angle of a hip. Looking at them sideways, I examine them in different lights. My love for them is visual: that is the part of them I would like to possess. Don’t move, I think. Stay like that, let me have that (Margaret Atwood Quotes) The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it (Margaret Atwood Quotes) I thought everyone would be familiar with this figure: if I’d studied a thing in school I assumed it was general knowledge. I hadn’t yet discovered that I lived in a sort of transparent balloon, drifting over the world without making much contact with it, and that the people I knew appeared to me at a different angle from the one at which they appeared to themselves; and that the reverse was also true. I was smaller to others, up there in my balloon, than I was to myself. I was also blurrier (Margaret Atwood Quotes) So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it’s the hardest to do anything with. That’s about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what (Margaret Atwood Quotes) All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. All of them? Sure, he says. Think about it. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist (Margaret Atwood Quotes) We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they’re not nearly fast enough, not for us, we’re way ahead of them, they’ll never catch up. That’s why we can go so fast: our souls don’t weigh us down (Margaret Atwood Quotes) I don’t want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can’t even see it, something that’s drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead (Margaret Atwood Quotes) A wave of blood goes up to my head, my stomach shrinks together, as if something dangerous has just missed hitting me. It’s as if I’ve been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if I’ve heard other people talking about me, saying bad things about me, behind my back. There’s the same flush of shame, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with myself. But I don’t know where these feelings have come from, what I’ve done (Margaret Atwood Quotes) Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ice. The blade of the skate floats, she knows, on a thin film of water, which it melts by pressure and which freezes behind it. This is the freedom of the present tense, this sliding edge (Margaret Atwood Quotes) In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as possible. I pretend to myself that I would be quite happy in a hermit’s cave, living on gruel, if someone else would make the gruel. Gruel, like so many other things, is beyond me (Margaret Atwood Quotes) Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it’s noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear (Margaret Atwood Quotes)

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