Latest Margaret Atwood Quotes from Interviews

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• Even in the tragedies, Shakespeare always put in parts for the comic actors because his audience was mixed. He puts in people who talk like aristocrats. He puts in idiots and fools. He puts in certain middle-range characters. And when you go to the Globe, you realize how that all works. The people who paid more sat in seats around the edge. Everybody else paid a penny. They put it into a tin box - that's why we call it the "box office." They stood in the pit, but they were very close, so when Hamlet was doing his soliloquy, it was addressed to you, the audience - right there.

  Margaret Atwood

  Character, People, Office

  "Margaret Atwood Remixes Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” as a Prison Drama". Interview With Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. September/October 2016.

• Women are human beings, and human beings are a very mixed lot. I've always been against the idea that women were Victorian angels, that they could do no wrong. I've always thought it was horseshit and does nobody any good. Remember, Lizzie Borden got off largely because the cultural agenda had convinced people that women were morally superior to men, so Lizzie Borden was "incapable" of taking the ax and giving her mother 40 whacks.

  Margaret Atwood

  Mother, Angel, Men

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• In the early fight for women's rights, the point was not that women were morally superior or better. The conversation was about the difference between men and women - power, privilege, voting rights, etc. Unfortunately, it quickly moved to the "women are better" argument. If this were true in life or in fiction, we wouldn't have any dark or deep characters. We wouldn't have any Salomes, Carmens, Ophelias. We wouldn't have any jealousy or passion.

  Margaret Atwood

  Passion, Character, Fighting

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Within one's own family money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything. There are all kinds of other things that we are not supposed to sell - political influence being one of them. We too rarely have public conversations about the common sense of money. We too rarely talk about the human cost of putting some of these economic measures into effect.

  Margaret Atwood

  Common Sense, Political, Kind

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• It used to be that your bloodlines dictated who you were. But the U.S. became the land of the self-made man, in which not only did you make a fortune but you could make up everything else about yourself as well. You move into a new town with a spurious pedigreed background and you just make yourself up.

  Margaret Atwood

  Moving, Men, About Yourself

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• I'm a Red Tory. To get a fix on this category, you have to go back to the 19th century. The Tories were the ones who believed that those in power had a responsibility to the community, that money should not be the measure of all things.

  Margaret Atwood

  Responsibility, Community, 19th Century

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist. I don't mean there's never any overlap. You learn things in one area and bring them into another area. But giving a speech against racism is not the same as writing a novel. 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. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

  Margaret Atwood

  Loyalty, Art, Writing

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• When I was young I believed that "nonfiction" meant "true." But you read a history written in, say, 1920 and a history of the same events written in 1995 and they're very different. There may not be one Truth - there may be several truths - but saying that is not to say that reality doesn't exist.

  Margaret Atwood

  Reality, Different

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• People talking about politics usually start from the ass end backwards in that they think you have a political agenda, and then you make your work fit that cookie cutter. It's the other way around. One works by simple observation, looking into things. It's usually called insight and out of that comes your view - not that you have the view first and then squash everything to make it fit. I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.

  Margaret Atwood

  Character, Cutting, Simple

  Interview With Marilyn Berlin Snell, www.motherjones.com. July/August 1997.

• The future of narrative? Built in, part of the human template. Not going away. The future of the codex book, with pages and so forth? A platform for transmitting narratives. There are others. The scroll is coming back (Twitter is a scroll.) Short forms are returning online. Interactivity is coming back; it was always there in oral storytelling. Each form has its pluses and its minuses.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Going Away, Storytelling

  Source: www.marandapleasantmedia.com

• Canada, at the moment, is going through a Lord of the Rings moment. Having been a lowly Hobbit with furry feet and fun parties, with fireworks and beer, it has now been handed the Ring of Power: a large supply of fossil fuel, in the form of oil/tar sand and coal. Will it shrivel into an evil RingWraith? Will it become an addicted Golum? Will it refuse the Ring, like Galadriel, fearful of what So Much Power (in both senses of the word) will do to its inner being? Will it try to deal with the Ring responsibly, like Gandalf? Will it side with the Ents?

  Margaret Atwood

  Fun, Party, Beer

  Source: www.marandapleasantmedia.com

• If all fossil fuel were to go POOF! tomorrow, the result would be a cataclysmic social upheaval, with food riots, warlords, shutdowns, breakdown of social order, water shortages, and outbreaks of bloodshed and disease.

  Margaret Atwood

  Water, Tomorrow, Breakdown

  Source: www.marandapleasantmedia.com

• I am rather saddened at the end of a book. I think most writers find this. It's like a friend departing on a voyage.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Thinking, Saddened

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• When people in my generation started to write, we did not actually have much of a movie industry, much of a theater scene, much of a television industry or other creative outlets. But we had a lot of aspiring writers. All that has changed. We now have a movie industry, television industry and lots of theater. But we have retained a large contingent of writers and a dedicated readership. The larger number of people in society who value writing, the larger number of good writers will be produced. That's my belief. It raises the bar.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, People, Creative

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I don't find the idea of sewing degrading. A thing is degrading when you are forced to do it, through economic reasons or through slavery or some other form of compulsion.

  Margaret Atwood

  Slavery, Reason, Economic

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• The astrologers would tell that the U.S. is ruled by fire and Canada is ruled by water. Short version: You pep us up, we cool you down.

  Margaret Atwood

  Water, Pep

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I enjoyed teaching. I liked the students. Having to formulate my ideas about literature made them clearer. I did not particularly enjoy the more bureaucratic aspects of the job. However, if you are teaching fervently, your energy and time are used up at a great rate.

  Margaret Atwood

  Teaching, Energy, Literature

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• You cannot teach somebody to write a masterpiece, but you can certainly teach them how to improve their writing skills. And you can teach them that they can make their own voices more effective by being able to communicate more clearly and forcefully. It makes people feel more capable when they can write - for instance to make a request - of a politician - and when they are able to receive a reply.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, People, Politician

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• Teaching other people to write is not something I can do. The only kind of advice I can give them will be trite by its nature. Of course, read a lot, write a lot. The kind of advice I wish I had been given is all of a practical nature, having to do with publishers and agents.

  Margaret Atwood

  Teaching, Writing, People

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• Just as if you do a mash-up of reality from the point of view of African Americans in this country, you're going to end up with something that will say, "This is Black Lives Matter." It's not that people necessarily have started out from that premise. But if you're looking at reality, that will be the result because that is reality.

  Margaret Atwood

  Country, Reality, People

  "Margaret Atwood answers the question: Is 'The Handmaid's Tale' a feminist book?". www.latimes.com. April 24, 2017.

• Keep the faith. Whatever that may be. Don't get too depressed yet, because I have a belief in America being very diverse and ornery, and containing a lot of people who are not going to roll over very easily for a totalitarian dictatorship. That is what I think.

  Margaret Atwood

  Thinking, People, Belief

  "Margaret Atwood answers the question: Is 'The Handmaid's Tale' a feminist book?". www.latimes.com. April 24, 2017.

• If you DJ reality, that is, if you make a mash-up of actual reality, you're going to end up with something that inevitably people will say, "This is feminist." Because you cannot avoid that.

  Margaret Atwood

  Reality, People, Feminist

  Source: www.chicagotribune.com

• Short forms are returning online. Interactivity is coming back; it was always there in oral storytelling. Each form has its pluses and its minuses.

  Margaret Atwood

  Storytelling, Online, Coming Back

  Interview with Paul D. Miller, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• The scroll is coming back (Twitter is a scroll.)

  Margaret Atwood

  Coming Back

  Interview with Paul D. Miller, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• The future of narrative? Built in, part of the human template. Not going away.

  Margaret Atwood

  Going Away, Narrative, Humans

  "Unscripted: Margaret Atwood Interview". Interview With Paul D. Miller, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.