Top 893 Quotes & Sayings by Margaret Atwood - Page 3

If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can't, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you'd be a very strange person indeed.

The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wrong.

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.

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.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, 'Nobody under 40,' or 'Nobody under 25.' With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is 'reader.'

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.

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tooting.

You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.

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

I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.

There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

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.

I particularly like Twitter, because it's short and can be very funny and informative. It's a little bit like having your own radio program.

You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.

Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are described as equals. If you walk into a cathedral and look at the decorations of early Christianity, there are vines, animals, creatures and birds thriving all over the stonework.

Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create ever more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism.

Lose your temper and you lose the fight.

Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Second, they think somebody's going to publish it. Third, they think somebody's going to read it. Fourth, they think somebody's going to like it. How optimistic is that?

Things musicals taught me: All your problems will go away if you sing about it.

Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

In the end, we'll all become stories.

Where do the words go when we have said them?

The desire to be loved is the last illusion. Give it up and you will be free.

And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.

You can think clearly only with your clothes on.

Oppression involves a failure of the imagination: the failure to imagine the full humanity of other human beings.

Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.

Potential has a shelf life.

friendship was always contingent.

This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year's threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath.

It is better to hope than to mope!

I exist in two places, here and where you are.

There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive.

There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.

If your not annoying somebody, you're not alive.

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.

If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.

Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance.

Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?

Good writing takes place at intersections, at what you might call knots, at places where the society is snarled or knotted up.

There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.

You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.

Show me a character totally without anxieties and I will show you a boring book.

As William Gibson says, the future is already here but it's lumpy. It's unevenly distributed. Some people are already living this, the ones on low-lying islands off the coast of India are being swept away, you know, it's already happening to some people. We happen to be very lucky so far.

We understand more than we know.

So much better to travel than to arrive.

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

The fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly.

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.

The facts of this world seen clearly are seen through tears.

I’m not sure which is worse: intense feeling, or the absence of it.

Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.

Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.

When we're young, we like happy endings. When we're a little older, we think happy endings are unrealistic and so we prefer bad but credible endings. When we're older still, we realize happy endings aren't so bad after all.

I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.

You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.

There is no fool like an educated fool.

Don't let the bastards grind you down.